Adaptation
by ShayneT
Summary: Taylor Hebert is unknowingly the descendant of a long line of Saiyans, but she doesn't discover her true power until she is saved by a mysterious martial artist.
1. Chapter 1

My world was pain.

I could feel something in my ribs breaking as I was hit with a bat, even as I tried to curl up to protect my vital organs. Others were kicking me, stomping on me, each explosion of pain followed by another so quickly that I couldn't keep track.

Running wasn't an option. There were too many of them, and something had broken in my ankle. I tried to fight back, but I'd just turned fourteen. I was weak and nothing I did seemed to make much of a difference.

I'd wanted to be a hero once. The last thing I'd wanted was to die alone in an alley because the ABB was having initiations, forcing members to commit a crime so that they wouldn't be able to go to the police.

There was someone with a video camera, catching it all. I hoped my Dad never saw it.

It was getting harder to breathe.

Suddenly the beating stopped, even though the sounds of a fight continued. I heard the video camera being smashed to the ground, and I looked up through eyes that were so swollen that I could barely see.

There was a tall man with a sculpted physique and broad shoulders fighting all seven of the gang members who had beaten me. It should have been a massacre, and it was, but not the way I would have expected.

Most of the older gang members seemed to know some kind of martial arts, even though the younger ones flailed around cluelessly. The man, however didn't seem to care as he used their movements against them.

They stumbled and flailed around, fighting themselves almost as much as they were fighting him.

I noticed that he was wearing a T-shirt with the logo of a local game shop that Greg couldn't stop talking about. It looked old and ratty, like he'd worn it a lot.

He moved almost like he was dancing.

I found myself suddenly sick with envy. If I'd known how to move like that, then I wouldn't be laying on a dirty alley floor dying. I wouldn't have had a problem with Sophia. Just knowing that I could move like that would have been almost like being a superhero, just like having real powers.

The fight was over almost as soon as it started.

The man was standing over me, and he muttered, "Oh, man."

A moment later he started doing medical things to me, and I passed out.

I woke to the sound of beeping.

I was a little surprised to be alive, but even more surprised to open my swollen eyes and see my father sitting beside me with Armsmaster.

My mouth felt dry, and it felt like I'd lost a few teeth.

"Taylor?" Dad asked, suddenly leaning forward.

"Miss Hebert," Armsmaster said. "Are you able to tell us anything about what happened to you last night?"

Direct and to the point. It surprised me a little. He didn't actually seem that interested, seemingly distracted by something else.

"Thirsty," I muttered, and my voice felt like broken glass. I think someone kicked me in the throat at some point.

Dad grabbed a cup and handed me some ice chips.

"What happened?" I asked.

I meant what happened after the man had saved me, but Armsmaster looked disappointed.

"It's not unusual for people with head injuries to suffer from amnesia," he said. "But there is suspicion that you were saved last night from an ABB attack by an unknown parahuman."

They hadn't found him, then, the man who had saved me.

"Perhaps you will feel better after Panacea has healed you," he said. "I've given your father my card."

He was gone a moment later. If he'd been paying attention I suspect he really would have questioned me, but it felt like he was going through the motions.

"I'm so sorry," Dad said. "I should have been there."

If he'd been there he'd probably have been dead. There was no way a man with my Dad's temper would have stood for what they'd done to me. They'd have had to kill him first, and then I'd have had two dead parents.

I was glad he hadn't been there, and that someone else had.

The only thing I wished was that I could know what he knew, that I could get stronger like him. If I could, I'd do anything just to be able to defend myself.

He'd beaten seven men like it wasn't anything, a man without any superpowers.

If I had his knowledge, his skills, then I wouldn't have to be weak any more.

I must have faded out again, probably from whatever drugs they were using to keep the pain at bay, because it seemed like Panacea simply appeared.

"Do I have your permission to heal her?" I heard her ask Dad.

I heard him grunt something, and a moment later I felt a cool hand touch my arm. I heard a soft gasp from her, and a moment later I felt bones begin to shift into place. Pain began to fade.

A moment after that I felt something _change_ inside of me.

The moment I was healed, I felt _power_.


	2. Compassion

My powers were the worst powers in the world.

Sure, I was suddenly able to lift twice my weight, but I only weighed a hundred pounds. There were guys on the football team who were stronger than that. What kind of power was having the strength of a teenage boy anyway?

I wasn't immune to pain, and I couldn't fly or breathe fire or anything cool like that.

The only other power I'd found was that I could suddenly sense people and animals in my immediate vicinity. The problem with that was that it didn't have any kind of a real range; it might let me see people from around a corner, but usually if I could sense them with the power I could see them.

It seemed really useless.

The thing was that I'd never heard of any power actually being useless. Even powers that seemed weak, like Skidmark's had applications that would make them dangerous in the right circumstances.

Even Panacea could probably put someone to sleep if she tried.

Having the strength of a teenage boy wouldn't even get me Brute 1, and my research on the Internet told me that there had never been any brutes without some kind of defensive ability.

Hitting myself with a hammer had quickly proved that I didn't have any of those.

It made me wonder if I was actually just delusional. Maybe I simply hadn't lifted anything in a while and was just growing, and maybe the lights I were seeing was a sign of a brain tumor.

In the end, I decide that I couldn't rely on a super power that just made me normal. I had to find other ways to defend myself.

The problem was that Dad was watching me like a hawk. He stared at me sometimes with an expression that I couldn't identify, like he wanted to say something but kept talking himself out of it.

Strangely, his aura was a lot stronger than everyone else's, at least three times as strong. Him I could detect from the other side of the house.

No matter how much I protested that I was fine, he wouldn't let me walk home alone. He had friends picking me up from school, something that Sophia and Emma loved to mock me about.

Sophia also had a stronger aura than usual, at least as strong as Dad's, which was the one good aspect of all of this. It was getting easier to avoid her because I could detect her from a hallway away, even if the others were too dim to detect.

Maybe it was my power's way of protecting me. That would be nice for a change.

It was two weeks before Dad couldn't find anyone to take me, and by that time I was ready to jump out of my skin. I had a plan, and that didn't involve staying in my house for the rest of my life.

The man who had saved me hadn't been afraid of seven thugs, even though some of them had been found with guns. I wanted that freedom from fear.

It wasn't even about wanting to beat up Sophia or Emma. They'd been tormenting me for six months and I didn't understand why, but I could handle that.

What I couldn't handle was the nightmares about being helpless, about being dragged into an alley and beaten just because of the color of my skin and because I was _convenient._

They hadn't singled me out or anything. They'd just been looking for an easy victim, one that would look particularly heinous on the video camera.

Enough footage had been found that non of the guys who had attacked me were likely to go free, except maybe the cameraman, and they'd probably testify against him. They weren't big enough in the gang for the gang to bother trying to spring them either.

Still, it was enough for me to feel nervous as I walked in the opposite direction that I should have in order to go home.

The man who had saved me had worn a T-shirt advertising a specific comic and game shop, something that Greg Vedar assured me wasn't a common thing. It had been part of a promotion several years before, back when gaming was a little more popular and business had been a little better.

He only knew about it because a lot of the regulars still wore those shirts, a sign that nerds didn't particularly care about fashion, I guess.

Or maybe wearing a nerd shirt was a little like wearing Goth clothes, a sign to other people that you fit into their social group. I wouldn't know what that was like. I'd never really fit into any particular social group, and since Emma had turned on me they'd made sure that no one else would want to be seen with me either, possibly so that they wouldn't get bullied too.

Still, the store had the advantage of being within walking distance of the school, and I'd found map and printed it out in computer class.

Walking along I couldn't help but feel uneasy, watching for someone to come out and snatch me away from the sunlit street and into the darkness.

The fact that I was a lot stronger now didn't matter. Against seven guys, even the burliest guy on the football team would have been on the ground crying like a little... well, like me.

That's why I needed to find the man who had saved me.

There were martial arts studios in town, but they were all too expensive. We were barely making it as it was, with the loss of Mom's income and what medical bills had come in. Dad was fighting a losing battle, and his pay had been cut so that at least a few of the other guys could keep their jobs.

It was a death spiral that was making it harder and harder for us to survive. It was bad enough that the fifty to a hundred dollars a month the community center would charge, or hundred and fifty dollars the private studios would charge would be beyond our means.

If I made it clear why I wanted it, I was sure Dad would try to find a way to make it happen, even if it meant he had to skip lunch every day. I couldn't do that to him though, and besides, I'd read about the local martial arts schools, and most of them were what people on the Internet called "McDojos."

They didn't teach real martial arts, instead teaching watered down versions so they could make more money. Even the schools that were more reputable tended to teach something that was a sport instead of a defense course.

The actual defense courses I could find seemed to be about hitting people in the eyes or groin. I'd tried that, and it had only made them madder.

None of them taught how to defeat seven men in less than two minutes.

The man who had saved me knew how to do all of that, and I was going to do whatever it took to convince him. Even if he wanted to be paid, I'd find a way of getting a job to pay him, probably by working under the table somewhere since I wasn't exactly legal because of my age.

I'd find some way to make it OK with Dad, but first I had to get the guy to agree with me.

Today, fortunately was the day that the comics came in. Greg had been quite informative about that. That meant that my chances of seeing the man were higher, although it was possible that he'd come in during the work day, while I was still at school.

If he wasn't there, all I had to do was ask around. If no one knew him, I'd just have to keep coming until I found him.

The comic store proved to be the one store still open in an old strip mall. All the other stores were boarded up, and the cheap rent was likely the only reason the place was still in business. It didn't look like much, although there were brightly colored posters in the window, mostly from comics I didn't recognize.

Many of them were from Earth Aleph, a place where the publishing industry hadn't been partially destroyed when Leviathan had attacked New York. Having real superheroes hadn't been kind to the old comic books anyway' these days people wanted to hear about Alexandria instead of... whoever that other guy was in the red and blue.

Still, there was a niche market, and these guys covered that, or so I gathered.

Entering the store, I saw several men. Most of them were in their thirties, and they all looked up at stared at me as though I was a talking baboon that had walked into the store. Weren't there any female nerds?

Or maybe it was something else about me that made me stand out, something that clued them in that I wasn't really part of this world.

I ignored the stared, even though they made me want to pull my hoodie up and withdraw like I did when I was at school. Talking to people was hard enough; this was only going to make it harder.

I moved through stacks of brightly colored comic books, through other hardback books that I didn't recognized, although they all seemed to have garish colors.

Finally I saw a familiar figure in the corner, staring at the cover of a comic book like he'd found the holy grail.

There were people nearby, and I debated walking up to him, but I instinctively knew that would be a bad idea. The way Greg talked about this place, it was like a church for nerds or something.

You didn't interrupt people in church.

Besides, I didn't want all the other people to hear what I was going to say to him. It was going to be hard enough asking him alone.

I slipped out of the store and waited around the corner. I waited, watching carefully, and as the minutes ticked by I wondered what could be taking him so long? Didn't guys like to shop quickly and get out?

Maybe hobbies were different.

If it was anything like the shopping expeditions my mother had once done I might be waiting here for quite a long time, even though the store really hadn't been all that big.

Glancing at the sun told me that I didn't have that much time. If I wasn't home by the time Dad got home, he was going to freak out.

I froze as I felt his energy moving out of the store. He had the same kind of strong aura that my Dad and Sophia did. Maybe it indicated combat skill? If that was the case maybe I'd been underestimating my father.

He was out of the store and walking down the street.

I started to follow him, and I'd followed him for a couple of blocks before I felt a change in his aura. He looked behind him and our eyes met.

He stopped, and slowly set his bag down, turning to face me.

"I don't have anything in the bag that you'd want," he said. "And I just spent all my money."

I realized that I had my hoodie up and that I probably looked a lot different than I had the night he'd saved me, since my eyes had been swollen up and I'd been missing a few teeth.

Pulling my hoodie down, I waved at him, and started trotting toward him.

"Why have you been following me?" he asked.

"I wanted to thank you," I said. "You saved my life."

He stared at me for a long moment, before he sighed.

"You're that kid. I guess Panacea got to you."

I was surprised that he knew about her. I hadn't. Apparently she was a member of New Wave, and it hadn't been all that long since she'd triggered herself.

Trying to smile, I had an uncomfortable feeling that it looked more like a grimace.

"You didn't have to stop," I said. "But you saved my life. I don't know what I can do to repay you."

He shrugged. "How old are you?"

"Fourteen."

"That's what I thought," he said. "I couldn't just let a kid die."

"A lot of people wouldn't have stopped," I said. "They'd have just kept on going."

I'd seen it happen before. Once or twice I'd even been that person, although not for anything this serious. I'd seen Sophia bullying other kids and I hadn't said anything, grateful that this time I wasn't the target.

Were they all like that?

"It's no big deal," he said. "How'd you track me down?"

"Your shirt," I said.

He scowled.

"Well, it's been nice talking to you and all," he said. "But maybe it's time for you to go home."

"I want you to train me," I blurted out.

He froze.

"What?"

"Teach me to do what you do," I said hurriedly. I took a step toward him and he took an involuntary step back. "Then I won't have to be scared every time I go out."

He seemed flabbergasted.

"You know learning martial arts takes years. Why don't you go to the Y? They teach some Tae Kwon Do."

"For sports," I said. "I need to learn how to fight."

"Chances are that if you just stay out of the bad areas of town nothing like that is ever going to happen again," he said. "Why don't you just go back to your normal life?"

"Because I live in a bad area of town," I said. I hadn't meant to raise my voice, but the sound echoed on the walls of the buildings nearby. "I'm never not going to be in danger."

He frowned, but he didn't seem convinced.

"There are private tutors," he said.

"That I can't afford."

"So you want me to spend the next five years of my life training a kid who can't even afford a McDojo?" He took a look at me and shook his head. "I've got a life, kid. I can't afford to spend that kind of time."

"I'll get a job," I said desperately. "Whatever I have to do."

He was starting to pull away, to reach down to grab his bags, not bothering to even respond to me. I could see from his face that he didn't have any intention of even listening.

"I'm a cape!" I almost shouted, then looked around guiltily to see if anyone else had noticed.

He froze, looking at me more cautiously.

"What?"

"I can see things," I said. "See life, I guess. You've got a lot more of it than most people do. I've only seen a couple of other people who are like that. Most people are pretty dim."

"You're a thinker?" he asked.

"I guess," I said. "And maybe a little bit of a brute, although not really super, if you know what I mean."

"Not...really?"

"I can lift twice my weight."

"You look like a stiff wind could blow you over," he scoffed.

"How many girls my age can bench press two hundred pounds?" I asked.

"How many reps?"

"I... didn't try?" I said. "Two hundred was just the max my dad had in the basement, and I was able to do it once. I probably could have done it a few more times."

He looked at me as though he was trying to tell if I was lying.

He held out his hand.

"Try to push me with your right hand. Don't lean your body into it."

At my weight, like that would make much of a difference. I stared at his hand reluctantly, and then finally reached out and took his hand.

I shoved as hard as I could, and he stumbled back a little.

"Strong for a girl," he said. "But that doesn't prove anything."

"Test me," I said. "I'll prove I'm a cape and then you'll teach me."

"Even if you're a cape doesn't mean I'm agreeing to anything!" he said quickly. "I'm just interested in you seeing some people as being different than other people."

"How long do you think it'll be before a gang tries to snap me up?" I asked. "I'm not strong enough for the Wards, but eventually somebody is going to figure out what I can do, and then they'll snatch me up as a lookout or something."

He frowned.

"Do you really want to see the Empire get me?" I asked. "Maybe the ABB will want to get revenge. Maybe the Merchants will try to get me hooked on drugs. You know what happens to Merchant women."

This was a man who had stopped to help a stranger. That meant he had compassion. I had to play on that if I was going to get what I wanted. This was too important to simply walk away from. I needed his help if I was ever going to be safe.

Or at least as safe as I could be in a world with Endbringers and the Nine.

"Fine," he said. "Let's test this. I'm not making any promises though."

I smiled widely, and this time it was genuine. "My name is Taylor."

He hesitated. "You can call me Garrett."


	3. Delivery

Sitting at Fugly Bob's, I described the movements of the people behind me while eating.

My father would have been really angry with me for getting into Garrett's battered and featureless white van, but this was my only chance to make an impression on him.

Garrett hadn't paid for anything and I was rapidly going through my lunch money, but it was all going to be worth it. Ever since Panacea had healed me my appetite had gone through the roof, and part of me worried that she had done something to me.

He simply sat and stared as I inhaled my food as though I hadn't already eaten a school lunch and two lunches that I'd brought from home.

Emma had made some nasty comments about me having Bulemia, but I'd been too busy eating to notice.

I stiffened suddenly as I felt a stronger aura coming from farther away. They were coming from the opposite direction, and I could sense them from half a block away. I wondered if that meant they were a really amazing fighter.

"Somebody's coming," I said. "Someone with one of those stronger auras."

His eyes sharpened and he stared at me for a long moment. He glanced behind me, and his eyes widened as he saw someone walk in through the door.

It was whoever had the strong aura.

"Dude!" a voice from behind me came. "Did you ditch me on comics day?"

"They're in the van," Garrett said.

I looked behind me, and I saw a scrawny looking man about Garrett's age walking toward us. He had some kind of obscure Anime shirt on and he looked like he hadn't combed his hair in a while.

Was he an even better fighter than Garrett? He looked like he could be knocked over by a leaf. I was taller than he was.

"Who's the kid?" the man asked, staring at me.

"She's the kid from a couple of weeks ago I was telling you about," Garrett said. "She tracked me down to thank me."

"That's... nice, I guess?" the man said. "She looks a lot better than you described her."

"Panacea," Garrett said. "The cops were looking for some mystery Cape and she couldn't talk so they fixed her up."

The scrawny man stared at me and he laughed uneasily. "You didn't say anything about a Cape being there."

"I didn't see one," Garrett said easily. "But I've explained to Taylor how I didn't want to get involved in the whole police thing."

There had been a discussion on the car ride over here. Apparently he thought the police might try to turn the whole thing on him and charge him with assault. I thought he was being a little paranoid about the whole thing, but I was only fourteen years old.

My only real encounter with the police had been when they had come to our door to tell us that Mom was dead, as though I hadn't known already having been on the phone at the time. They'd questioned me at the time. They hadn't charged me with anything even though I felt they should have.

It wasn't something I liked to think about.

"Right," the scrawny man said. "I'm going to go order. The website's up and everything is almost ready to go."

"Website?" I asked despite myself.

"We're going to have a YouTube channel," the skinny man said. "Finally get paid for something other than menial jobs."

Garrett glared at him, then turned to me. "I believe you. That doesn't mean that I'm going to train you."

"Train her?" the man behind me chuckled. "I suppose we could use a minion, or maybe just an intern."

Weren't minions what vilains had? It seemed like a tasteless joke in Brockton Bay, where even some of the Dockworkers had been forced to work for some of the gangs as henchmen.

"It's the same thing," Garrett growled. "And she's not going to be our intern."

"I'm willing to work," I said. "Whatever I have to do."

I tried to look as hopeful and yet as determined as I could, but I probably just looked constipated. I wasn't really the best at talking to people.

Staring at me for a long moment, Garrett sighed finally.

"I'm not training you, but maybe you can help me deliver water in the afternoons. Martial arts takes a lot of determination, and if you can't even help with a menial job how can I expect you to go through the kind of training you're going to need to make it around here?"

I smiled at him and he scowled.

"I'm still not helping you," he said. "I'm totally taking advantage of you."

"Anything can be training if you put your mind to it," I said.

It made sense that he'd test me. In elementary school I'd known a lot of kids who would beg their parents for an expensive musical instrument only to lose interest once they realized how hard it was. I had no illusions that this was going to be easy, but I wasn't going to be that entitled kid, and the only way I had to prove it was to show him that I was serious.

"That's the spirit, Intern," the man behind me said. He sounded like he wanted to laugh.

My meal was done, but I knew I was going to eat again when I got home. I was out of money though.

Almost as though he read my mind, Garrett reached into his pocket and handed me some change. "That's enough for bus fare. I want you to meet me at this address." He sighed. "Don't make me regret this."

He scribbled an address on a napkin, along with a time and date.

Four o'clock tomorrow. It'd be tough to get there from school, but I could manage it if I tried hard.

"If you're late I'll assume you weren't serious about the whole thing."

I nodded. I took the bus home, and I barely made it before Dad got back from work. It didn't occur to me until later that night that maybe Garrett had meant for me to use the money for the bus tomorrow.

The next day was more of the usual, but my excitement for my first day of training made all of it a little more bearable. I barely noticed Emma's jibes, and this time I'd brought half a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter, which I'd scarfed down on the roof.

I needed to go back to Panacea and see if she'd done something to me to make my appetite so insane. At the rate I was going I was going to eat Dad out of house and home.

Time seemed to slow as the end of the day neared, and I was the first one out of class.

To get to the place he'd indicated, I was going to have to hurry. I ran, which should have wiped me out, but I'd picked up some level of endurance along the way even though I was still soaked in sweat by the time I got to the water distributor.

Garrett was outside waiting, looking at his watch.

"Who's the kid?" the man standing beside him asked. He looked a little like a lot of the Dockworkers, big and burly and a little long in the tooth. He had a gut that hung over his belt.

"My niece," Garrett said. "She's going for a ridealong."

"Don't make a habit of it. The bosses might get upset."

"What can I do?" Garrett said. "My sister wanted me to watch her today, maybe give her an idea of what real people working looks like."

"Fine. Just make sure she doesn't get hurt."

A moment later we were getting into a new van that had a prominent label on it. We were on our way.

"We deliver water," he said. "It's heavy work, but what can you do?"

Work on YouTube videos apparently. I could tell by looking at him that he hated this job, but I could see that it kept him in shape.

The first stop was to a warehouse. I could feel a lot of people inside.

"Those are five gallon jugs in the back," he said. "They need five of them inside."

He sat and looked at me and it took a moment for me to realize that he meant for me to deliver the jugs by myself.

"We've got a lot of water to deliver and not a lot of time, so don't take a long time. Just hand this clipboard to the man at the door, get his signature and then we're on our way."

I went to the back and grabbed one of the jugs. Five gallons of water weighed what, like forty five pounds? Even with my new strength it wasn't inconsequential to grab one and sling it over my shoulder. I staggered as I grabbed another and did the same.

Together they weighed almost ninety pounds, and I was only ten pounds heavier than that. I shouldn't have been able to lift them at all. Instead I stepped off the back of the truck and felt the shock absorbers compensate as I did so.

I walked up to the door, awkwardly swung one of the jugs to the ground and then I knocked on the door.

"Water delivery, " I said to the man who came to the door, and he signed.

I went back twice more for the jugs and I could see that the inside was some kind of contruction company. It surprised me to see that they were so busy considering the economy in Breockton Bay.

A moment later I was back in the van.

"You'll have to move faster than that if we're to stay on schedule," he said.

"I'll get better," I said.

It didn't take me long to see why he hated this job. It was repetitive and hard on the muscles and the joints. It didn't take long before my muscles were burning, but a look at him told me not to complain. I needed his help, and this was my way of proving to him that I was worth investing his time.

Within three hours I'd delivered a hundred bottles and it was only when he saw me staggering a little that he took mercy on me.

He drove me home, dropping me off at my house.

"You're gonna have to be faster tomorrow," he said as he dropped me off. "Maybe you should take up running."

My shoulders and back and arms burned, and so did my hips. I wondered when he thought I'd have time for running, unless he meant that I should do it in the morning.

It wouldn't be a bad idea, actually, assuming that I could get the energy to do it.

I fell asleep early that night, and my sleep was dreamless.

Waking up, I was sore, but I was still enthusiastic. He was just trying to discourage me to see if I was worth his time. I had to prove to him that I wasn't going to quit.

I was sore, but it didn't feel bad. If anything I felt invigorated, although I almost missed school because I couldn't stop eating breakfast.

School flew by, and this time he met me on the way to school, out of sight of his supervisor.

"I'm surprised to see you here," he admitted.

"I'm in this for the long haul," I said.

"Today I want you to run beside the van," he said.

"What?"

"If you are a parahuman you should be able to keep up with a vehicle going slow enough to go through a school zone."

Considering that would be twenty miles an hour, which was at the upper levels of human speed I wasn't sure what he was thinking. I nodded gamely, though.

It wasn't long before I realized just how out of shape I was. I could keep up with the van; I suspected that he was driving extra slow just so that he wouldn't get so far ahead of me that I would give up.

My chest felt like it was on fire after the first three miles; if I hadn't had gym class with mandatory running every day I probably wouldn't have made it at all. The only saving grace was the stops, since I couldn't run during those and I had to get signatures and bring water in.

It was harder to carry the jugs than it had been the day before, probably through sheer exhaustion.

He did offer me water bottles every so often. They weren't cold, but he told me that drinking cold water would just make me cramp up.

He let me run twelve miles before I started stumbling and almost falling. Finally he took pity on me and let me ride in the truck the rest of the way. He still made me finish carrying the jugs though.

"It'll be the same thing tomorrow," he said. "Are you sure you want to come back?"

"I need this," I said stubbornly.

"All right," he said. "But I took it easy on you today. Look how long it took us! Tomorrow you'll have to be faster."

I winced as I realized that Dad nwas going to be home.

He was probably going to blow his stack, especially if I was dropped off in front of the house by a strange man in a van.

There wasn't any helping it. I didn't have the money for a bus, and if I walked it would be late enough that he'd probably call the police.

Garrett shook his head, muttering something about me being a crazy kid.

I suspected that he was trying to push me to the point where I gave up, but it wasn't going to happen. I needed what he had to offer so that I no longer had to be afraid.

Living in Brockton Bay, there was always going to be danger. If I jumped at every shadow my life outside of school was going to be just as bad as my life at school.

Garrett dropped me off in front of my house, and I could see Dad's car in the driveway. I could see the curtains move as he looked out the window at me and I winced.

"I'll be there tomorrow," I said. Hopefully Dad didn't find some way to ruin this for me.

Stepping out of the van, I forced my head up straight and I walked toward the door. I probably smelled terrible, my sweat clothes drenched with sweat.

Still, I'd managed something that I hadn't believed possible today. I doubt I could have run that far all at once, but with repeated periods of rest I'd just been able to make it.

I wondered if Garrett had to exercise this much. Was this a deterrant or was this a form of training? I couldn't be sure.

The house was dark as I entered, but I could see Dad's silhouette sitting on the couch in the living room.

"Where have you been?" he asked.

"Training," I said. "The guy that saved my life said he might teach me to fight if I helped him out with work."

"Gang work?" he asked.

"Water delievery," I said. "Just like the sign on the truck."

He was silent for a long moment. "And what has he had you doing?"

"Carrying water, running," I said. "He hasn't agreed to train me yet, but I think we're close."

He sighed. "You don't need all this. You don't know where all of this ends for us."

"For us?"

"There's something I haven't told you about our family," he admitted. "Maybe you should sit down."


	4. The Talk

"People think that Scion was the first parahuman," Dad said. "But they are wrong."

I stared at him, taking a seat on our one wooden chair, sensitive to the fact that I was covered in dried sweat.

"So if it wasn't Scion, who was it?"

"About a thousand years ago a man fell from the sky, landing in China," Dad said. "Legends call him Sun Wukong."

"The Monkey King," I said.

Mom had enough books around the house that I was at least passingly familiar with the legend.

"People think it was just a legend, but it wasn't. He wasn't a monkey, but he did have a monkey's tail. He really did have superhuman powers."

"And just how do you know all of this?"

"He's our ancestor," Dad said. "Fifty generations removed."

"That seems like the kind of thing someone would say to make themselves seem important."

Dad sighed. He clapped his hands together, and I suddenly saw his life force flare up. A moment later a ball of... something appeared in between his hands. It crackled and glowed, and I stared at it. It almost looked like it was made up of the energy of life itself.

"We've all had powers for the last thousand years, some more than others," he said. "Which is why the myth doesn't seem like much of a myth."

The ball went out, and I stared numbly at the spot where it had been.

"And you haven't told me about it why?"

"Because it's not a gift," he said. "It's a curse."

He didn't say anything else, just sitting in the growing shadows. The silence between us grew to the point that it was actually uncomfortable.

"How's a little bit of strength and the ability to see life a curse?" I asked finally.

"Because it doesn't stay a little bit of strength," Dad said. "We _adapt_."

"Adapt...you mean like Crawler?" I asked, my heart sinking.

Everyone knew about Crawler, the member of the Nine who got stronger the more he was hurt, but was warped by his powers into more and more inhuman forms. If _that_ was what I was facing I'd have to rethink a lot of things.

"Crawler without the regeneration," Dad said. "We don't turn into a slug thing or anything like that, but it's a pretty close analogy."

"So the more we get hurt the stronger we get? How is that a curse?"

"Those boys beat you almost to death," Dad said. "How much stronger did you get?"

"At least twice," I admitted.

"It's the fastest way to get stronger, almost dying, and a lot of us have gotten addicted to those kinds of power boosts."

"OK," I said slowly. "And... "

"How many times can you _almost_ die before you end up really dying?"

"Is that the only way we can get strong?" I asked.

Dad shook his head. "You can train, but fighting tends to be the fastest and easiest way to get stronger."

"Still," I said. "If you get strong enough, then nobody can hurt you anymore. Wouldn't that be a good thing?"

"Our power is theoretically unlimited," Dad said. "But practically we're limited by the strength of the people we fight. Let's say you get really strong, maybe even strong enough to fight Lung. Who else are you going to fight?"

"An Endbringer?" I asked.

"How much stronger than Lung is an Endbringer, really?"

"He held Leviathan off by himself."

Dad shook his head. "The Endbringers are faking it. I've seen enough videos of the fights to know. Leviathan is at least ten times as strong as Lung ever was, maybe more. He could be fifty or a hundred times as strong."

"The more you fight, the more you want to fight," Dad said, leaning forward. "Getting stronger is addictive for us, it's part of our nature. The first few generations were born at least ten times as strong as a regular person, and they fought each other to get stronger."

I stared at him in the darkness. The sun was setting outside, and the shadows were growing longer.

"Whole generations were wiped out because they couldn't _not_ fight," Dad said. "You've seen my temper. I'm what's left after generation after generation of the most violent of us were killed off early before they had time to breed."

Dad wasn't my idea of a peaceful man. If what he was saying was true, then how violent had our ancestors been?

"So why haven't we ever heard about any of them?"

"You have," Dad said. "It's just most people think they are legends, folk heroes. Pecos Bill, John Henry, El Cid. Your Mom helped me piece together as much of the family tree as we could given the records. Some of it is lost, but I can definitely tell you that we've had family serving in every major war for the last thousand years."

"There would be actual historical records of people with powers," I said stubbornly.

"We're only as strong as what we have to fight against," Dad said. "And in a world without super powers, the best we could do was fight bears."

"Bears?"

"Don't ask," Dad said. "The thing is, the milder branches of the family tried to live quiet. How useful do you think the kind of powers we have are in day to day life?"

I stiffened. "It could..."

"Without fighting I mean," Dad said. "I worked out when I was in college, trying to impress your Mom. I could lift up to eight hundred pounds at one point. I can barely make half that now. How many times have you ever seen me using it?"

I frowned. I couldn't recall ever seeing Dad carrying anything unusually heavy.

"We live normal lives," Dad said. "And what good is super strength in a normal life except when it's time to move furniture?"

I frowned. Outside of combat I could see what he was saying, but it still didn't help me stay safe. It wasn't like I wanted to fight Hookwolf or anything. I just wanted to be strong and fast enough to stay out of trouble.

"Before Scion it was easier. Nobody would believe that someone could be that strong, so they'd laugh it off. Since then, you run the risk of a gang trying to recruit you, threatening your family, maybe killing you," Dad said.

"So get strong enough that they can't," I said.

"Everybody's got a weak spot," Dad said. "Even Legend has a husband. Even if you could get me to train with you, what about Kurt and Lacey, Emma, the kids from school? There's people in your life they could use to get you to join."

"I'm not planning on fighting anybody," I protested. "But what happens the next time a group of thugs like that decides to attack me? If I can't defend myself, I might end up dead or worse next time."

Dad scowled. "I could teach you. I've learned a few things from my Dad, even though I've tried to stay out of the life."

I shook my head. "The guy who saved me beat up seven guys easy, even without powers."

"And what if he learns you are a Cape?"

"He already knows," I said. "It didn't matter to him."

Dad was silent for a long moment. "I wish you hadn't told him. It puts us both in danger."

"He already knows where we live," I pointed out. "If he was going to betray us, there's not anything we can do about it now."

"Do you even know anything about this guy?" Dad asked.

"He helped me when he didn't have to," I said. "That's more than anybody else was willing to do."

Dad scowled. "I'm uneasy about all of this. How do you know he's not a villain?"

""If he is I'll run," I said. "But if he can teach me how to stay out of trouble, won't it be worth it?"

"I want to meet him," Dad said after a long pause. "And you aren't going to be fighting anyone. You're going to want to; it's part of our family heritage. It's what gets all of us killed sooner or later, that need and urge to fight."

I was quiet for a moment. "Is that why I've been eating so much?"

"Your body needs a lot of fuel when you are training; whatever it is that lets us adapt needs a lot of energy. If you stopped for a while your appetite would go back to normal."

"So I'm going to have to get a job to help pay for the food," I said.

"I'll try to make it work," he said. "But we may have to hit a few all you can eat restaurants on the other side of town."

"Why on the other side of town?"

"Where people don't know us," he said. "You haven't even started to reach your limits yet on how much you can eat. The heavier the training the more you'll need to eat."

"I'm hungry now," I admitted.

He chuckled uneasily. "I noticed the pantry is getting pretty empty."

I frowned. "How did you make the ball thing?"

"There's ways to use this energy inside of us," he said. "I learned some of them, even if I'm not particularly strong. Legends say that Sun Wukong could destroy mountains, and there are techniques that have been passed down through the family."

"I'd like to learn that," I admitted.

"It'd be like handing you a gun," Dad said. "I don't think I'm ready to teach it to you yet."

I tried to remember what I'd seen him do.

"I'll just experiment until I figure out how to do it on my own," I said. "I'll get it down sooner or later."

"Legend says that some of the family was actually able to fly once they got strong enough," Dad admitted. "I've never been able to do more than float a little."

He hesitated. "There are ways to use it to make yourself a little tougher. There's no harm in teaching you that."

Given the state of Brockton Bay, I resented him a little bit for not having taught it to me when I was four. Of course, at that time I'd have blurted everything out to my classmates, and later I'd have told Emma.

Having Emma know I wasn't fully human wasn't a good idea at all.

"So is that it?" I asked. "We can adapt?"

"There's some minor things," Dad said. "You remember how I always made you wear your coat when it wasn't even that cold?"

"Yeah?"

"It really was cold. We just don't feel it like ordinary people do. I just didn't want anyone to notice anything strange."

"O.K.," I said.

"Also, we sometimes turn into were-apes."

He was silent again. I stared at him wondering why he would suddenly make something up that was this ludicrous. Was he making a joke? It just seemed to come out of nowhere in the middle of a serious conversation.

"Right," I said. "And you aren't just monkeying around by saying that."

"I'm serious. Most of us are born with tails, and if we see the light of the full moon while we have a tail, we grow into a thirty foot tall ape that's ten times as strong. We grow crazy and destroy everything we can get our hands on."

"That sounds like something you're making up to mess with me," I said, scowling. "So you're trying to say I'll turn into some kind of monkey by the full moon."

He nodded.

"But I don't have a tail."

"They removed it when you were born, like they always do. Some people are born with tails naturally, they just aren't covered with fur. I told the doctors it was a weird genetic quirk that runs in the family and had to talk him out of doing a study."

I stared at him for a long time.

"So I had a tail," I said flatly. "A monkey's tail."

"The reason I'm even telling you this is because you need to take care of it if you have a child. Also, there has been rare cases of the tail growing back when we're in danger. You've got to watch out for that."

"Apes don't have tails," I said.

"Well, monkeys technically, but from what I remember they look kind of like gorillas."

"You've seen it?"

He shuddered. "Once, and I never want to see it again. I had an uncle who didn't get his tail removed. It was terrible and I almost died."

"Why wouldn't you get the tail removed?"

"His parents were part of some religious group that didn't believe in medical interventions. After it happened when he was three they made sure to keep him in on moonlit nights, but he slipped up when he was twenty. He killed his whole family."

The look of horror on Dad's face was enough to convince me that he wasn't joking.

"So tails are bad."

"Really bad," Dad said. "You basically turn into a weak version of an Endbringer."

At my strength level now a ten times power increase would basically make my ape form as strong as a real gorilla, which seemed weak to be thirty feet tall. However, if I ever got really strong it would be a whole different story.

"I still don't see why you think getting strong is a bad idea," I said.

"It's a little like having a gun," Dad said. "If all you have is a fist, then somebody will start punching, But if one person has a gun there's always a temptation to pull it out, to _use_ it."

"But if you use it for good," I said. "Most of the guys you are talking about couldn't get very strong because all they had to fight was normal people. We live in a different time now. If fighting stronger people means you get stronger, then why not become a hero?"

"Heroes end up dead, Taylor," Dad said. "So do villains. Why do you think that your mom stopped being a henchwoman for Lustrum?"

"I thought it was the whole castration thing," I said, making a scissor motion with my finger.

Dad grimaced. "That made it a lot easier, true. But your Mom had friends die, and she saw where it was all going. People like to make being a Cape out like its some kind of cops and robbers game, but Capes die all the time, and not just in Endbringer fights."

"Not so much if you join the Protectorate or the Wards," I said.

"Are you ready to join the Wards?" Dad asked, looking at me piercingly. "Do you even have any powers that they can test?"

I'd shown Garrett my life sense, but nothing else I had was remotely ready to be a hero. I scowled.

"No, but haven't you been trying to make this city better for years? Bring the jobs back, rebuild the ferry, make people's lives better?"

He nodded.

"None of that's going to happen while the gangs rule the city," I said. "The Protectorate isn't going to do anything, and nobody else has enough power to do anything."

He didn't say anything.

"You're telling me that both of us have the power to make a difference, and you don't want me to use it? If I can get to the point where I'm bulletproof, why wouldn't I use it to save this city?"

"And what happens when you meet Hookwolf?" he asked. "Or Lung?"

"Then I'll run if I'm not strong enough."

"That's not in our nature," he said. "Running from a fight. You say you'll run, but when it's right in front of you it'll be hard not to give in to your instincts."

"It just doesn't seem particularly brave what you're doing, hiding in plain sight."

"You'll understand when you are older," he said. "Having responsibilities changes you. Your mother gave up being a henchwomen in part because she learned she was going to have you. I gave up on it for the same reason."

It didn't sound to me like he'd ever used his powers for anything other than impressing girls.

I stared at him for long moment.

"I'm going to get stronger. Even if you don't let me train with Garrett I'm going to find a way to do it."

He sighed. "I know. That's why I want to meet this benefactor of yours. If he's really a good man he won't put you in danger."

"Also, I want to learn how to make that energy ball," I said.

"What will you do with it if I teach you?" he asked. "It's not really good for anything other than fighting."

"It'll keep me safe," I said. "I've seen what's out there, and pepper spray isn't going to be enough to keep me safe."

"I'll think about it," he said. "But I will teach you how to use your ki to make yourself tougher."

I nodded. "I'll take it."

This put my training with Garrett in an entirely different light. The harder he made the training the stronger I was going to get. That meant that he was going to have to put me through hell in order to get me to reach my true potential.

I couldn't wait to tell him.


	5. Knowledge

"Adaptation," Garrett said, staring at me. "It'd make sense. Most capes don't start out as weak as you, so it would make sense that there's more to your power than what you've already shown."

I hadn't told him about my family's history. It was the one concession Dad had gotten from me in return for being allowed to continue with this.

"So the harder I push you the stronger you get. How did you figure it out?"

"It just came to me," I said, lying.

"Well, most people know how to use their powers from the beginning, so it makes sense."

I nodded, wondering how he knew so much about Capes. Of course, I was starting to realize that he was something of a nerd, which probably had something to do with it. Greg Vedar certainly couldn't stop going on and on about capes.

Was Scion just a cape like my ancestor, one who'd started out almost as weak as me, but grown to the point where even Endbringers had to fear him?

The thought that I would one day be as powerful as him was intoxicating. It wasn't just about being safe; there was an allure to being so powerful that Sophia and Emma would finally understand that they couldn't bother me any more.

If I had the power of a god I wouldn't have to deal with petty problems like bullying.

"I guess that makes this a good thing," he said. He pulled a large backpack from behind the seat, visibly straining as he handed it to me. I grunted as I grabbed it.

"What's this?"

"It's what you'll be wearing on your deliveries," he said. "While running."

"I still have to heal before I get stronger," I protested.

"Are you saying you don't want to do it?" he asked.

I sighed. He'd already made it clear that he was pushing me trying to make me give up. Now that I knew that all of this was only going to get me closer to where I wanted to be, I certainly wasn't going to back down.

"All right," I said. "Whatever."

If I'd thought running twelve miles while repeatedly grabbing water jugs was difficult before, this was torture. The only thing that kept me going was that men in the military did this sort of thing and they didn't even have parahuman powers.

Of course, they'd probably had more time to work up to it too.

As we came to our third stop of the day, I felt a large number of strong life forces inside the warehouse we were delivering to.

They wanted ten jugs of water, which wouldn't have been that surprising except that we were in an industrial area and there weren't a lot of cars around. Why did they have so many people inside a warehouse at this time of day?

"Who is this we are delivering to?" I asked, stepping into the van.

"Don't ask questions," Garrett said. "It's better for everybody."

"There's a lot of people with strong ki inside," I said.

He turned and stared at me for a moment, then sighed. "Think about what you've told me. You can sense someone's fighting power. There are a lot of people with strong fighting skills inside. What does that tell you."

"They're in a gang?" I asked slowly.

He nodded. "Ordinary people don't do a lot of fighting. Even cops don't do that much. That means that there's probably a lot of guys in there with guns, and you aren't bulletproof, at least not yet."

"So I shouldn't ask questions."

He nodded.

I sighed. I could see why he would be reluctant to deal with people like that. No amount of Kung fu could deal with a guy who had a sub-machine gun.

Still, it was possible that this job might have more potential than I'd thought. If I could feel people who were violent, that meant that I could hunt the gangs down pretty easily.

This job was going to take us all over the city, which meant that I might have a chance to build up a pretty good map of whee the gangs were hiding. That information by itself would be valuable to the PRT or even the police, assuming I could make them believe me.

Of course, that might actually get a lot of people killed. I could see police raids leading to police officers being dragged away in caskets.

Maybe I needed to watch and wait like Garrett said.

That didn't mean that I was going to give up. It just meant that I was going to plan. I wasn't going to be a single-minded idiot like my father insisted most of our family had been.

No matter how much I wanted to fight, I wasn't ready.

It wasn't like I was planning on going after the gangs myself. I wasn't near that point and even if I had that kind of power, it would just mean escalation.

After all, if I beat up the gangsters at an Empire safehouse, then the Empire would call some of their capes in. If I beat them, then they'd keep bringing more and more capes in until they finally found a way to bring me down.

In the meantime people would be getting hurt; normal, powerless people who had no ability to defend themselves.

That's what Dad seemed to think anyway.

I still wasn't sure I agreed with him. It seemed to me that if you had the power to stop something and you didn't, that made you partially responsible.

The world needed heroes, and I had the chance to be one.

Still, that was something that was a long way in the future. I scowled and nodded.

"Get moving," Garrett said. "And be extra polite to those guys."

Right.

I knocked on the door to the warehouse, and a moment later a man pulled the door open. He was wearing a wife-beater and jeans and he didn't have shoes. He had tattoos all over his body; a large eighty eight on one side of his neck and a Celtic cross on the other. His head was bald and he looked like he was hung over.

"What do you want, kid?"

"Water delivery," I said. I pointed back at the truck.

I could hear the sounds of dogs barking from inside the warehouse and I wondered what the Empire was doing with dogs. I hadn't heard of them attacking anyone using dogs, and I couldn't imagine what else they were for. The place smelled like sweat and wet dogs though.

"Give it here," he said. "We'll take care of bringing it inside. What's in the backpack?"

"Schoolwork," I said. "You should see what they're giving us these days."

"Whatever," he said, signing the electronic clipboard.

I dropped a water jug at his feet, and turned to go get the rest.

"Aren't you a little scrawny to be moving water?"

"He's my Dad," I said, shrugging. "He's trying to teach me the value of a dollar or something, or at least that's what he says."

I tried to throw in as much teenage scorn as I could possibly muster up, using everything I remembered Emma doing as a guide.

From his expression it seemed to work. He visibly relaxed and nodded approvingly. "It's important to teach them young."

That was probably how the Empire tricked a lot of people into their ideology. Teach them young and they would continue to believe in the cause even after they were old enough to know better. How many of them would have been completely different people without having been radicalized?

I dropped my backpack off at the van and I slowly brought the water one jug at a time to the door, being careful to make it look harder than it was. The last thing I needed was for the Empire to think that I was a parahuman.

When it was over, they had several men moving the water inside.

I stepped into the van and didn't run like I had been with the other stops.

Garrett nodded. "I'm glad to see you aren't stupid. I would have warned you about this stop, but they only need water every couple of weeks and they are pretty new."

"Just drive," I said.

He didn't make me get out and start running again until we were more than a block away.

I started paying more attention to the ki I was sensing in the stops after that. Sometimes what I sensed was flickering and weak, like one old woman that I had to go inside for and change her water for her. Garrett said it was all right.

She tipped me, which was nice.

Other times, the ki blazed, like when we delivered water to the Dallon household. Garrett made me take my backpack off for that one, and he went up with me.

All of the Dallons had blazing auras, especially Glory Girl. If I was sensing fighting spirit, it made sense that she would have a lot of it. I was getting the uncomfortable sense that I was sensing parahumans though, and if I was, that would be a problem.

After all, being able to sense parahumans outside of costume was one step away from outing them, which was something that wasn't done. I'd heard Greg Vedar talking about it enough to know what happened to capes who threatened other capes in their own homes.

It generally wasn't pretty.

All pretense of it being a game vanished and things tended to get serious and lethal pretty quickly. I wasn't foolish enough to think that me being young and female would make much of a difference. All of the gangs would come after me, thinking that I was about to tell the PRT what I'd sensed.

The fact that I'd been flirting with the idea earlier only made it worse. Maybe I would only tell the PRT about the human gang members.

They tended to have higher ki than normal people, but it was possible that parahumans simply got into more fights than everyone else.

The one good thing was that my range was increasing on my ability to sense ki. It hadn't been able to extend very far at first, but the more I used it, the closer it was getting to covering entire warehouses. That meant that I was going to be able to sense not just Sophia, but also gang members and other criminals who might want to hurt me or Dad.

Of course, now that I knew Dad's secret I had to wonder just how well he'd do against gang members. He'd told me that the weight set had belonged to Mom. Had she gotten training in Lustrum's arm and maybe taught Dad, or had he taught her how to fight leading to her getting a place in the army?

Over the next few days I continued in the same vein. My greatest frustration was that the run wasn't getting any easier. The water was getting easier to carry, but the run itself wasn't. I couldn't understand why, given what my Dad had told me. Was I hitting some kind of plateau? Or was there something else going on?

At the end of the first week as I dropped my backpack into the van I grumbled to Garrett.

"This isn't getting any easier. I don't understand."

He grinned at me, as though he knew something I didn't. "It's not supposed to get easier, not if you want to get better."

"Yeah, but I'm supposed to adapt, and it's just not happening."

"How much weight do you think is in that backpack?" he asked.

"Fifty pounds?" I asked.

"Try a hundred and fifty pounds. I've been adding more weight every day."

"It doesn't seem any fuller," I said, scowling.

He shrugged. "I've been switching out heavier stuff instead of more bulky stuff. You never even noticed the difference."

I scowled. "That seems like a dirty trick."

"Is it? Or maybe you didn't give up because you thought you couldn't do it. That pack weighs more than you do, and it's pretty much at the limits of what a backpack can carry."

"So what can I do?" I asked. "If we can't keep making it harder, I can't keep getting better."

"I've got a friend who is a tinker," he said. "And he's invented a way to make your clothes heavier. Getting rid of the backpack is a good idea anyway, because people are starting to talk. The weighed clothes will put more pressure on your arms and legs, which you'll want if you want to get stronger."

I nodded. The water bottles were getting ridiculously easy. I'd have been able to stack several of them if I'd been able to balance them and I hadn't been worried about outing myself.

"Is it going to cost a lot?" I asked. "The tinker clothes?"

"It's really just arm and leg bands," he said. "Otherwise you'd damage your washing machine, and if we do things right you'll need your washing machine. The best thing is that the weight is adjustable, and I'm going to be the one with the remote control."

"And I could wear it all the time?" I asked.

He frowned. "I'm not sure. An ordinary person gets the most benefit if they have time to heal in between training sessions, and it's easily possible to injure yourself with something like this. On the other hand, Brute physiology is weird sometimes. It might be possible, but I think I'm going to want to start off slow."

"Have you decided to train me?" I asked.

After all, giving me tinker tech, even if it was just a loan was a major commitment.

He sighed. "Yeah. We'll work an hour of training in a day after the deliveries are done."

I grinned at him. "That's great!"

"It doesn't mean we're going to slack off," he said. "The stronger you get the more you're going to want to use what you know. There comes a point where you think you know a lot more than what you do, and that's the most dangerous."

The Dunning-Kruger effect. I'd heard of it. The basic idea was that people who knew a lot about a subject knew just how much they didn't know, and so they tended to underestimate their ability. People who had very little knowledge tended to overestimate what they knew. Essentially they didn't know enough to know how ignorant they were.

In other words, a little knowledge was a dangerous thing.

Of course, if I got tough enough, skill wouldn't matter.

Garrett stated at me and scowled. "It doesn't matter how strong you get, there's always going to be people stronger, and some of the people in the Empire were professional pit fighters. Even people like Rune, who's probably younger than you have been in a lot more real fights. Experience matters, sometimes more than strength, at least up to a point."

I doubted experience had mattered a lot against Leviathan the first time he'd gone on a rampage.

On the other hand, against someone who was closer in power I could see how it would make much more of a difference.

"O.K." I said.

Between my Dad and Garrett, everyone seemed convinced that the first thing I was going to do was go looking for a fight. Didn't they understand that my whole reason for doing this was so that I didn't have to fight?

If I was strong enough then nobody would oppose me, and I could go back to living a life where I didn't have to worry about being attacked by people and pulled into a dark alley.

I still had dreams about that, and the pain didn't bother me as much as the sense of helplessness, of violation. I hated feeling like a victim. Being a victim was weak. It meant not having control over the situation.

I wasn't going to feel that way ever again, even if it meant that I had to face more pain than I'd felt then.

Garrett stared at me and sighed. I guess some of what I felt was showing on my face, because he shook his head.

"There's something I want you to do," he said.

"What?" I asked cautiously.

We pulled up to a playground that looked like it hadn't been used in a while.

Garrett stopped the truck and asked me to grab one of the water jugs from the van. I nodded and did so, following him out to the monkey bars. He was carrying a bucket and a teacup.

He had me set the water jug underneath the monkey bars, and then he wedged the bucket on top of the monkey bars, just to the side of the water jug below.

He handed me the teacup, and then he unspooled a wire that he was holding in his pocket. He slashed, and the top of the jug was gone, cut through like it was butter.

I stared.

"I've got a tinker friend," he said, grinning. "He can build anything."

"So what do you want me to do?"

"Hang upside down from the monkey bars," he said. "Then I want you to fill the bucket using the teacup."

I stared at him. "Really?"

"There's some schools in China that do this, and they don't even have any powers. If you aren't willing to do this, then..."

"Fine," I said, scowling.

At least this was going to give me abs instead of the small pot belly I'd been developing. Maybe I'd be able to make Emma jealous of something at least.

I could do this.


	6. Balls

"Why is it orange?" I asked.

It didn't look at all like the Tae kwon Do outfits I'd seen in the past. It didn't have arms and was in two pieces, a tunic like top and pants. The color reminded me of prison uniforms, which I wondered if this had been made from.

At least the blue undershirt wasn't too bad.

Garrett shrugged. "It's a woman's prison outfit with the sleeves pulled off."

"What?"

"I had a girlfriend in college who was into Cosplay," he said defensively. "She was about your size, since you are freakishly tall for a kid your age."

I couldn't even ask if he could afford a real Karate gi since I certainly couldn't afford one.

"So you are saying that if a cop sees this he'll probably chase me?"

"It's part of your training," he said. "At least I got you some good boots. It's important to have good footing when you are fighting."

I scowled.

"So go change into it," he prompted.

My scowl grew more intense. Changing in a convenience store bathroom was bad enough. What was worse was that they had cameras which meant that someone was going to be able to see my face.

I said as much, and he said, "You could change in the back of the truck, but there's not a lot of privacy back there."

Scowling, I agreed, and a moment later I slipped inside.

My muscles ached constantly these days; whenever they started to feel good Garrett increased the workout to a ludicrous degree. It was like he was secretly a sadist or something.

Once I'd finished filling the bucket with the teacup, he'd had me empty it again into the jug beneath me one teacup at a time.

I was starting to get abs, though. It was getting to the point where I was going to have to make an effort in gym class so that nobody would see me naked. I'd been doing that already, but I was going to have to work harder. The last thing I needed was for Sophia to realize that I was getting ripped.

I slipped into the outfit, which was surprisingly comfortable. It felt like something that had been washed a lot, and it suddenly occurred to me that this outfit was about the size of Garrett's friend, the one I'd seen a couple of times.

Was it really from a girlfriend, or had he just been embarrassed to tell me that his male friend was so into cosplay that he'd worn the outfit to the point that it was soft.

I tried to move experimentally, and I realized it was easy to move in, at least as easy to move in as my usual sweat clothes.

The boots were my size as well, and they were comfortable. I wondered how Garrett had known my size. That was a specialized skill; had he worked in retail at some point?

Slipping out of the convenience store, I was careful to keep my hair over my face and my face averted from the cameras on the ceiling.

I was out before the cashier could scream that I needed to buy something.

Slipping my clothes into my backpack, which was no longer going to be filled with rocks or whatever Garrett had put in there, I glanced at Garrett.

"It's pretty late," I said. "Dad's gone for a conference like I said. Why keep me out this late?"

"There's a place that I wanted to use," he said. "But it's open until nine, and there's stragglers until ten."

I nodded and sat in the passenger's seat. We were in his personal van, not the water company one. Having a man his age driving a girl my age around in a van like this probably looked suspicious, but I could always just claim he was my father.

At least he wasn't asking me to run alongside the van. He'd been increasing his speed recently, which meant that we were getting the deliveries done faster, but had been a lot harder on my body.

I suspected that he'd been going slow on me at first, which meant that the whole thing was taking longer than he'd been used to. He liked to pretend that he didn't care but I knew better.

We were at the college sport's complex. I blinked. It was at the edge of the college and the lights were dark. Apparently it was closed.

Brockton Bay college had seem better days; the sports complex was part of that. Dad had taken me there once, back when Mom was still alive to play racquetball. It had been built back in the eighties when it had been thought that the money rolling in was going to last forever.

Now they had abbreviated hours and the place was starting to fall apart because of a lack of maintenance. They allowed members of the public to pay a day rate because it was one of their only ways to pay for maintenance.

A moment later we were out of the van and heading toward the front entrance. I could see where cameras had once been over the door, but they'd been shattered and looked like they were no longer working.

Garrett pulled out a couple of pieces of wire, and a moment later, to my horror he was picking the lock to the security door.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

He looked up at me. "Do you really want people to see what we're doing in here?"

"No," I said reluctantly.

"Well, I don't work here and I don't have a key. The people who own the place wouldn't approve of what we're about to do, even though it wouldn't do any of their equipment any damage. They'd be worried about liability."

"Where did you learn to pick locks?" I asked, ignoring the implication that whatever we were about to do was going to be cruel or dangerous.

Of course it was.

"I picked it up here or there," he said. He grinned up at me. "I can do a lot of things."

I scowled, looking around. Standing over someone picking a lock while wearing a bright orange prison uniform seemed like asking for trouble.

The door clicked, and a moment later we were inside. Garrett moved through the dark like he'd been here before, which was likely true. I wondered for a moment if this was where he'd gone to college. He'd let slip that he'd met his friend in college, although I suppose it could have been in another city.

I followed him, wondering if moving around in the dark was part of my training, or if he just didn't want to alert campus security by turning on the lights.

He waited until we were further in the complex to turn any lights on.

Soon he was pulling out baseball pitching machines. He had me pulling them out as well, and we were soon setting them in a circle in the middle of the recreation area.

"I don't like hitting girls," he said. "Even superhuman ones."

He pulled out some tape and was making a square on the floor in the center of the circle.

"What are we doing?" I asked.

There were eight machines in a circle, and Garrett was plugging all of them into a strip, another Tinkertech device. I had to wonder how many gadgets his tinker friend was making, and why he was sharing them so generously with his friend.

"I want you to stand in the middle," he said. "Inside the circle."

I stared at him suspiciously, but finally did as he said.

"You're going to have to learn to dodge things," he said. "Because no matter how tough you get there's always going to be someone tougher, even if it's just Leviathan or the Simurgh throwing things at you."

"Some of these are from behind me," I protested.

He shrugged. "You don't think people are going to try to hit you from behind? At least I'm bit making you do it blindfolded."

There was implicit yet in that statement that I didn't particularly like.

He had a controller that he attached to the thing everything else was attached to. Apparently he was going to choose which pitching machine he was going to hit me with.

"I thought you didn't like hitting girls?"

"I'm not," he said, grinning. "You can always give up."

I shook my head stubbornly. Suddenly I heard a whirring sound as all of the machines came to life.

There was a distinctive whine, and suddenly I felt pain exploding on my left side as a baseball hit me in the ribs. It knocked the breath out of me, and I suddenly couldn't see anything but red.

"If you're right about your powers, this will hurt less in the future," Garrett said. "Which is why you have to learn now to avoid things that hurt. What are you going to do if a gang member shoots at you? That's going to be a little harder to shrug off."

There was a whine and another baseball hit me in the shoulder blade. Pain exploded, and I fell to one knee.

"Are you ready to give up?" he taunted.

I stood up slowly and shook my head. I heard the sound again of a pitch, and this time I threw myself to the side.

"Good," he said. "But try to stay in the circle. Remember, bullets will be coming at you at over six hundred miles an hour. These baseballs are going at ninety."

I grimaced as I heard another whir and a ball hit me in the arm.

"Hurts, doesn't it?" he asked. "You think it won't hurt if Hookwolf gets hold of you? Rune throws concrete blocks that will hurt a lot more than this. Lung breathes fire. Even Skidmark likes to throw things. If you don't learn to dodge then you won't ever get a chance to live up to your full potential."

I grimaced as I heard the machine behind me and to my left shooting.

"Of course, you know what we're going to do when you get good at this, right?" he asked.

I shook my head, avoiding another ball.

"We're going to make the circle smaller," he said. He grinned.

Crap.

It hurt to move.

I had bruises all over my upper body. I'd have had them on my legs too if batting machines were designed to throw balls at people's legs. Fortunately all of my injuries were in the strike zone.

Unfortunately, that meant that I was black and blue all over my back and arms and ribs. It actually hurt a little to breathe, and I wondered if I'd broken something.

Fortunately Garrett was giving me the weekend off. He and his friend were doing something, probably nerd related, and he thought this was a good opportunity for me to heal.

Three entire days without being in pain sounded a little like heaven, although part of me suspected that I was going to get a little antsy by the last day.

Because of the bruises, I was having to wear my black hoodie. I was going to have to keep it on all day, and do everything I could to keep people from seeing the bruises. The last thing Dad needed was for a well intentioned teacher to call CPS on us.

It was a sunny day at least. Maybe it was warm, maybe not. I hadn't realized until Dad had mentioned it that temperature extremes didn't bother me much. Whether it was heat or cold, it hadn't ever bothered me much.

I slipped into school, and saw that girls were clustered around my locker.

They tittered as I walked up. Someone had spray painted "Whore" across my locker. I sighed and shoved past one of the girls who wasn't fast enough to move.

"What the hell, Hebert?" Emma asked. "Turning into a bully already?"

I didn't bother to look at her, simply opening my locker covering it with my hand so that none of them could see the combination. I'd already had to change lockers twice because they'd figured out the combination and I had no intention of doing it again.

"Or maybe you've just started cutting," she said. She smirked. "That's what girls do before they decide to really commit and end up killing themselves."

Considering that at least three of the girls who were standing behind her were known cutters, I was surprised that she was going there.

She grabbed for my wrist, and I snatched it away.

"Don't touch me," I said. I looked at her finally, and she took a step back.

"Psycho freak," she said. "Why don't you drop out of school, and get started on what you were always meant to be... a Merchant whore."

"She's not good enough to whore for the Empire," one of the girls behind her taunted. "And the ABB has higher standards too, and they'll enslave just about anybody."

"They wouldn't have to enslave her," a different girl said. Marcie, I think. "She's so hard up that it's the only way a girl as ugly as her is ever going to get laid."

I ignored them, shoving my things into my backpack as quick as I could. It shouldn't have bothered me, but there was a certain strength in repetition, a point where it was no longer about what was being said, but became shorthand for all the other times similar things had been said.

Slamming my locker door shut, I locked it.

A moment later I was pushing my way through the crowd of girls. For the moment I didn't care about whether I knocked some of them down, and given my strength I doubted they'd like what would happen if I did.

I sensed motion from my right, and I stepped out of the way a moment before Sophia would have body checked me.

Hmm, maybe the dodging training wasn't entirely worthless.

I stepped around Sophia, who was glaring at me suspiciously. As much pain I was in from just moving the last thing I needed was for her to add to it.

I grunted, and made it to class on time for once.

Something sticky was on my seat. Garrett kept talking about situational awareness, and for once I was glad about it.

I slipped into the seat that Greg Vedar normally took, and I saw him staring at me with a confused look on his face. He was apparently a lot less situationally aware than I was, and he had a sudden look on his face when he sat down.

Having experienced that feeling far too much in my life, I didn't enjoy seeing it. I should have warned him, even if he was normally annoying, and I felt a little bad about it.

"Sorry," I said quietly.

He turned and looked at me, looking hurt. While I tended to focus on my own bad experiences at school, I knew that he had his own experiences from time to time, and not just from the girls that made my life hell.

Some of the boys had done things to him that I'd only heard about in passing, which meant there were probably a lot more incidents that I didn't know about.

Still, class passed quickly, and it didn't hurt much if I didn't move.

What I wasn't looking forward to was second period. Physical education should have been something someone with my power set would be chomping at the bit to enjoy, but at the moment I felt like I'd been beaten black and blue with baseballs.

Oh, right.

Furthermore, I couldn't even use anything close to the amount of strength or endurance that would get me a good workout. That would risk outing me as quickly as anything else.

The only good thing about the class was that the coach, Ms. Hanley didn't play any favorites. Some of the girls liked to claim that she was a lesbian, but I'd never seen her peeping in the locker room or anything.

She was all business, and if she dressed butch that didn't bother me. Wasn't that how coaches were supposed to dress?

Still, today was supposed to be dodgeball, a sport designed for bullies, and I was in enough pain that even balls thrown by girls weren't something I was looking forward to.

At least I wasn't wearing weighted clothes. Garrett was threatening to use those the next time we had ball practice, to slow my reaction time down.

Sometimes I wondered whether he was enjoying this a little too much. It would have hurt less if he'd hit me himself, over and over and over again.

"Why are you wearing sweats? It's ninety degrees in here," Coach asked me.

"Sophia and Emma stole my other ones and I haven't had a chance to get any new ones," I said. It had the virtue of actually being true.

"Get on the court," the coach growled. "And don't complain about it being too hot."

The smart thing to do would be to try to get tapped out as quickly as possible. I'd done it before. Hopefully I'd get hit in the legs where it wouldn't bother me as much.

I could see the girls whispering and I grimaced. They were all going to go for me.

There was one way to take care of that. The moment the coach blew the whistle I stepped forward and pretended to stumble and fall, grimacing as I fell on my hip. The balls flew over my head, and I made sure to awkwardly swing my arm up so that one of them hit me in the forearm.

It didn't hurt as much as usual, but it was possible that I had simply moved the bar forward as to what I thought was painful. Compared to a ninety mile an hour fastball, getting hit by a rubber ball thrown by a girl simply didn't rate.

Garrett had told me that it was important not to fear pain, or I'd flinch every time someone tried to punch me in the face.

"Herbert," Coach yelled. "Do you need to see the nurse?"

I shook my head. "No, I'll be fine. I got hit though."

That meant that I got to sit on the sidelines, and the numbers were soon growing fast enough that I wasn't likely to be called in.

It was almost pleasant sitting and watching other people throw balls at each other. I sat and I waited for class to end.

When the girls headed for the locker room, I lagged behind as I often did. It made me late for my next class, but girls were a lot less likely to steal my things while I was in the shower.

I waited until the girls had all left before I finally slipped into the shower.

Turning the spray on, I relaxed finally. It felt good to have water rushing over my poor, abused body.

"What the hell, Hebert?"

I turned, almost slipping and I grimaced.

Sophia was standing behind me, undoubtedly planning to hit me with a bet towel and probably try to drive me nude out into the hallway.

Instead she was staring at the hundreds of bruises on my upper body.

Apparently my situational awareness wasn't where it needed to be after all.


	7. Threats

I shut the water off, grabbed my towel and covered myself as well as I could. Showing that I was embarassed to be seen naked by her would just give her another tool to use against me, and I couldn't let her see any more weakness.

Letting myself enjoy the shower enough to let go of my Ki sense had been a serious mistake, even if it was something I was new to using. I probably shouldn't have taken a shower at all, but Coach usually insisted, probably because some of the boys ended up smelling like a Rhinos backside if they didn't, leading to complaints from the other teachers.

Even when kids hadn't exercised at all she usually insisted, considering that some of the Winslow kids weren't washing well at home.

"What?" I asked Sophia.

My only option was to try to bluff my way out of it. I knew how it looked; the bruises covering my body looked like I was being abused. If she pushed it far enough it could lead to her calling Child Protective Services out of spite, which would cause us all kinds of problems.

My Dad had suffered enough, and I didn't want to cause him any more grief. Additionally, I'd be allowed to continue training if I ended up in a foster home. With my luck I'd end up living with Emma, which would be the worst thing I could think of.

"What in the hell happened to you?" she asked.

"Why do you care?" I asked. "You planning to become my social worker or something?"

Sophia snickered. "You think I'm gonna help a loser like you?"

I tried to move past her, but she moved quickly to block the door. I stood within arm's reach of her, staring at her, as though I could move her by force of will. Being naked when she was clothed gave her a certain amount of power over me, and I didn't like it.

In an ideal world I wouldn't have cared, but society had drummed into me that women's bodies had to be perfect, which mine wasn't, not yet at least. She looked like she was in better shape than I was, even if I was in reality much stronger and tougher. The problem with brute powers was that they didn't always come with the looks to match.

"What happened?" she demanded.

Sometimes the best lie involved telling the truth.

"I got attacked by the ABB," I said shortly. "It was an initiation test. There's a police report and everything; look it up."

If she actually did, she might see a notation that I was healed by Panacea, or maybe realize that it had already been a couple of weeks and the bruises should be more healed than they already were. The fact that I had offered her the option meant that she wasn't likely to do it.

"Those aren't bruises from fists," Sophia said, staring at my injuries clinically. "Or from boots or bats. What the hell did they use on you?"

I wondered for a moment how she knew; from the look on her face I suspected that she was telling the truth. Was she beating people often enough to see the results of her handiwork later? Or had she been given her own bruises?

"Does it matter?" I asked. "What do you care?"

She was silent for a long moment.

"If it's your Dad..." Sophia began awkwardly.

I stared at her. It almost sounded like she was trying to help in some kind of weird, messed up way. However, the only way she could help would be to hurt me far worse than anything she had deliberately done.

"You shut up about that," I said. "My Dad had nothing to do with this."

She stared at me, and then something in her eyes hardened.

"Maybe I should call someone," Sophia said. She smirked. "After all, poor abused Hebert might need protecting from her big bad Dad."

"And what do you think I'd tell them if you do call Social Services?" I asked.

She frowned, obviously not catching on.

"I'm certainly not going to blame my father for something he didn't do. But do you know who _has_ hit me in the past, Sophia?"

"You wouldn't dare," she said, stiffening.

"Why not? The people investigating child abuse don't care who's a great track star, or who knows a fancy divorce lawyer. They'll start digging into your past, and if you've got any skeletons in your closet they'll find them."

Sophia was glaring now. She started toward me.

"Hit me in the face," I said. I stepped toward her until we were almost touching. "It'll make my story all that much convincing. Let's take this outside even; it'll be embarrassing, but there will be lots of witnesses that you attacked me in the shower."

I leaned toward her, speaking into her ear.

"A lot of girls are scared of you, but what do you think they'll do if they get a chance to stab you in the back? If you end up in juvie they'll move up in the social hierarchy; they're bitches like that."

"They all know better," she growled, frowning. She took a step back, though, and her hands unclenched.

"Do they? If they can say things to cops and then claim they took it out of context why not?" I said, staring intently at her. "Emma might be different, but then again, she used to be my friend and look where we're at now."

There was confusion in her eyes, so I pressed the point.

"How happy do you think I would be to pin all this on you?" I asked. "Because if you nuke me like that I'll have nothing else to lose. My mom is dead and my Dad is all I have left."

"I'll kill you," she threatened, her hand's clenching again.

"You can try," I said. "The Asians did, and I'm still here. But what's good for the goose is good for the gander."

"What does that even mean?"

"Did you know that knees are the hardest part of the body to heal?" I asked. "There's a lot of stairs here in Winslow. Do you really always want to have to be watching your back all the time?"

"And if I go to Blackwell and tell her you've been making terroristic threats?"

"Then I tell the police the same thing I'd tell the guys from CPS," I said. "What do you think the odds are that at least one of the cops won't be an Empire sympathizer? You know how the cops are. A poor white girl beaten up by a black girl in this city? News gets around, and next thing you know people are coming after your family."

"You stay away from my family!" she said, alarmed suddenly.

"You act like you're really tough, like it doesn't matter if some gangbanger comes after you. Maybe you really are, but I'll bet your Mom and sister aren't that tough."

She took a step toward me, rage in her eyes.

"That's how I feel when you threaten my Dad," I said. "It's a little like the unwritten rules they talk about capes having. Fight me all you want, but the minute you come into my house and threaten the people I love, the gloves come off."

She stopped suddenly.

"I've got nothing against your family, and I'd never do anything to hurt them... unless you come after mine. Then the gloves come off." I raised my hands, thankful that the towel somehow managed to stay in place. "All of this can be avoided if you just keep your mouth shut. You should probably try to avoid anything that would send me to the Nurse's office too; after all, they have to report any abuse they see."

She stared at me, impotent for once. I felt a sudden surge of triumph.

"You won't have those bruises forever, Hebert."

The way Garrett was training me, I probably would, actually, although she had no way of knowing that.

"We can go back to playing this game when I heal up," I said. "But in the meantime I've got to get to class. We wouldn't want a teacher wondering where I got off to and coming and looking for me? Maybe Coach?"

Sophia scowled, but she reluctantly stepped aside.

I could see that I hadn't entirely convinced her. She'd looked at my body, and I could tell that she'd noticed that my belly was almost gone and that I was in much better shape than I'd been before. I had solid muscle underneath, but there was still enough baby fat on top to cover it up.

The last thing I needed was for her to punch me in the gut and feel what was happening to my body.

She lurched at me as I passed by, hoping to make me jump back or startle. Given that my feet were wet that probably would have left me flat on my rear end.

I moved into the locker room and was pleased to note that my clothes were still where they'd been left. She hadn't dumped them or done something unspeakably vile to them. I'd hidden a second set just in case that happened, but now I didn't have to use them.

Getting dressed hurridly, I tried to ignore Sophia, who was staring at me.

"Getting a good look?" I asked.

Teenage girls were sensitive about being accused of homosexuality, although probably not a tenth as much as the boys were. Fortunately I was enlightened and had no preconceptions, but I doubted Sophia was the same way.

The look of disgust on her face proved that point at least, but it didn't derail her train of thought.

"You aren't as fat as you were," she said. "Look like you've been working out."

That was something that I didn't want to share with her, even if it didn't immediately lead to me being outed as a cape.

"Jogging,' I said. "It's how the ABB caught me. It was stupid."

"Not stupid trying to be better," she said. "Especially if you start out worthless."

In a strange way it was the nicest thing she'd ever said to me, even if it had been followed by one of her usual insults. I didn't look back in her direction, although I did keep track of her energy, just in case she decided to come up behind me and slam my head into a locker.

I had threatened her family after all, and it was very possible that she might think about that and decide that I'd be less of a threat if an accident happened to me.

Watching my back was going to be something I was going to have to get used to.

"It got my ass kicked," I said. "Not worth it."

"It's always worth it," Sophia insisted. "You think people are born weak? They _choose_ to be weak, to get stepped on. They don't fight back, and then when the world pisses all over them, they whine and cry like little babies."

"You think I should have taken a punch at you?" I asked, finally looking at her. "Fought back? Then I'd be the one going away in cuffs."

"What, from a schoolyard fight?" Sophia sneered.

I shook my head. "If I come after you, it won't be some little fight. I'd _hurt_ you and then I'd end up hurting my Dad."

"You couldn't lay a hand on me," Sophia said. There was a certainty in her voice that told me she believed it. It probably meant that she had some experience in fighting, maybe even training.

I doubted that she'd gone through the hell I was putting myself through though.

"Say that's really true," I said. "I attack you and nothing comes of it. You think Emma wouldn't love to see me in juvie?"

"Making excuses again, Hebert?"

"Just letting you know. If I come after you it'll be because I don't care about going to juvie anymore, and that'll only be if I don't have anything to lose. It's probably in everybody's interest that doesn't happen."

"Trying to grow a pair? You should have done this a year ago when maybe I would have believed it. You talk big, but you've never followed through on a single thing no matter what we've done to you."

I didn't argue. I simply closed the locker and spun the combination closed.

"I always thought Skidmark was the lowest piece of crap I could imagine, but at least he fights his own fights," Sophia said. "He doesn't cry and whine and moan about how unfair it all is."

"I only fight when it matters," I said. "And this schoolyard crap... you really think any of it matters in the long run?"

It was the longest discussion I'd ever had with Sophia that didn't end in her pushing me or body checking me.

"This isn't over," Sophia said. "I'll be coming for you."

"So basically another day at Winslow. Why should I care?"

I was asking for it, but I couldn't help it. I knew that all I was doing was pushing her to escalate. She'd work with Emma to make my like even more hell than it already was, hoping to push me into... something.

Did she really want me to punch her in the face?

Or did she just want an excuse to punch me, to push me down and prove that I was as worthless and weak as she said I was?

"You act like we've done the worst to you, but we haven't even started," Sophia said. "Things are coming that make what we've done so far look like playing in the kiddie pool."

"I'll survive whatever you throw at me, and I'll get stronger. You should enjoy yourself Sophia."

"Why?" she asked suspiciously.

"Because this, right now is where you're going to peak." I said. "Your mom isn't rich enough to send you to college, and you aren't smart enough to get a scholarship. You think you're good enough to get a track scholarship? It's a pretty competitive world out there."

I shook my head and threw my towel in the bin.

"Once high school ends you'll end up in a dead end job somewhere. Maybe you'll get a kid, but it's not likely a guy will want to put up with you long enough to stay. You'll end up being a single mom in a crappy apartment just like most of the people here."

She took a step toward me. "You think you're better than me, Hebert?"

"I will be," I said. "I'll work my way through school if I have to, and I'll get a good job. In the end I'll leave Winslow behind, and the best revenge I'll ever get is by not thinking of you at all, because in the end, you're just a speck of something nasty on my show."

She started toward me, but I was already moving toward the door. I was outside before she could catch up to me, and there were a lot of people out in the hallways.

As she screeched to a stop in the door, I could see a murderous look in her eye.

It had been stupid of me to bait her. It meant that she was bound to try something, and probably soon. I simply hadn't been able to resist finally being able to tell her how I'd felt, no matter what the consequences were.

Dad was holding up the Ki lessons until he met Garrett; it was the one real thing he had to control me. Unfortunately Garrett was going to be busy for the weekend.

I headed for my locker and got my books. I reached my next class just in time to see that everyone was crowded up against the windows, talking excitedly.

We were on the second floor, and they were looking out over the front lawn.

I pushed my way through as well as I could, and I blinked as I stared down at something that didn't seem like it would be possible.

It looked like Mario and Luigi were riding around in souped up Golf Carts, being chased by members of the Protectorate and some of the Wards. They were throwing Koopa shells at Assault and Battery. A thrown banana peel caused Triumph to slip and fall.

It looked like they were making fools of the Protectorate and it sounded like a lot of my classmates thought that was the funniest thing they'd ever seen. There were cellphones out recording the action.

Those guys had to be crazy. As fast as those carts were going, it would be easy for them to outpace any of the Protectorate members except Velocity, and he wasn't here.

Still, it was kind of funny, and I found myself enjoying their antics along with everyone else until they sped off, leaving the Protectoare eating their dust.


	8. Priorities

I could sense Sophia following me as I jogged.

My range still wasn't great, a half block to a block at best, and for some reason she kept dropping off my radar even if she should have been well within range. I was going to have to ask Dad if there was anything that could block Ki, because I couldn't depend on something if there were weaknesses I didn't know about.

Garrett still wasn't finished whatever he and his friend were doing; they were probably doing some nerd thing that would have bored me out of my mind. For this weekend, it was probably for the best, since I still needed to heal from the beating the balls had given me.

Dodging was a lot harder than I'd thought, and Garrett was insistent that I learned it now when I could still feel pain, because there might come a time when I'd need it, even if it was only at Endbringer attacks.

He was also insistent that I get used to pain.

Apparently a lot of the sports martial arts were so careful with people that they never used full contact sparring or anything else, and people got used to not hitting when they should, or following rules that didn't exist in a street fight.

It was good that Garrett wasn't coming today, though. With my luck, Sophia would call the cops and try to pretend that Garrett was molesting me. That wouldn't make training any easier.

Garrett had suggested that I alternate training. The incident with the baseballs hadn't just been meant to increase my dodging skills; it had also been meant for me to get used to pain, and to increase my toughness.

That meant that I needed to try to avoid getting hurt until I healed, but I could work on other aspects of my power. Fortunately Garrett had told me that a set of weighted clothes were ready for me. All I had to do was pick them up.

The problem was that I didn't want Sophia to see what I was doing; worst comes to worst I could always wait until tomorrow, but part of me was impatient to get started today.

That meant that I had to lose her.

The weird thing about my ki sense was that it almost felt like she was running along the rooftops, which couldn't be right. I'd have to learn to calibrate it better or it wasn't going to be useful to me.

Getting rid of her wasn't going to be easy. I could try to simply outlast her; most people couldn't run twelve miles. Of course, I hadn't tried running twelve miles without stopping either, something I was probably going to have to work up to.

Sophia was on the track team. If I was able to run her into the ground she'd be suspicious that I was a cape. That wasn't something I needed her thinking about.

Obviously I couldn't have her anywhere near the places I usually met Garrett. That meant that I had to run in a direction away from anywhere I wanted her to see.

I turned left, heading toward the Docks. That was was closer to home, anyway, and it would be more believable, assuming Sophia knew where I lived.

My second best option was to do something so boring that Sophia gave up. This had actual possibilities.

The Lord's street market was perfect; Sophia would never believe that I had the money to shop at the Boardwalk, but the market had all kind of cheap things that she might believe I could afford. Sophia didn't strike me as the kind who liked shopping either, so it would probably up the boredom factor.

Now if it was Emma following me it would be entirely the wrong strategy. Emma loved shopping. But it would be excruciating for Sophia.

It was a three mile run to the street market, which was at the outer edge of what Sophia would expect from me. As an added bonus there was an all you can eat restaurant nearby, so once I ditched Sophia, I'd be able to indulge myself.

Dad had told me he was going to be late from work so to feed myself, which was not as easy a task as it once had been. He'd given me money, which wouldn't have been enough except for an all you could eat place.

His advice for that was to never hit the same place in a month; this was both kind to the proprietors and gave them a chance to forget about you a little.

Unfortunately I didn't know of thirty all you can eat places in Brockton Bay. This meant that the burden of my growing appetite would fall on my Dad. I'd have to find some way to get more money.

Getting a job at my age would be difficult; the amount I'd make babysitting probably wouldn't even pay for one meal at a regular place.

As I jogged I realized that Sophia was rather good at this. I would never have known she was behind me if it hadn't been for my ki sense.

It had recently rained and there were puddles on the ground. I glimpsed her peering over the top of one of the roofs in the reflection. How was she getting from roof to roof, and was that something I needed to learn.

I'd heard of park our, and if it was working so well for Sophia, a non-powered person, how well would it work for me? Hopefully it was something Garrett was good at.

I had the sense from Dad that flying wasn't something I was likely to be able to do for a long time, so I needed some way to get around the city. Jogging and running was great for training, but eventually I'd need to get places fast.

A bicycle maybe? Ordinary people had been clocked at level ground with speeds of almost ninety miles an hour. Someone with extra-normal strength should do better than that, although it was possible that an ordinary bicycle couldn't hold up.

It would look a little silly for a hero to bicycle up to a crime scene. What would I call myself? The Cyclist?

Strange that I was already thinking about a career as a hero when I still wasn't even out of the maximum range of what was possible for a normal person. I'd heard of female weightlifters able to squat more then eight hundred pounds. Of course, the woman who had done that had been monstrously large, but still.

Was I really looking forward to going out and getting beaten again so soon?

I remembered the pleasure that gaining power had given me, and I had to wonder whether this was addictive. Was this what had driven my ancestors to the edge, pushing themselves over and over into danger so that they got stronger and stronger until one day they met something that killed them?

I could do the math. After a thousand years of two and a half children each generation, with some of them mating with their own relatives because that's how it often was back in the day, I should have fifty million relatives. That dwarfed the parahuman population, and it would have meant a world that was unrecognizable.

With that many of us, I suspected that even the Endbringers might not have been a problem, even if only because we'd have swarmed them.

If there weren't many of us left, that meant the family tree had been pruned even more viciously than what Dad had suggested.

There had to have been bottlenecks where the entire family except one or two was wiped out, possibly by someone turning into a giant ape, assuming Dad was serious about that, which I still was not sure about. It sounded a little to ridiculous to be believed, although the expression on his face had been anything but funny.

Reaching the Lord's street market took half an hour; running all at once was more difficult than doing it with numerous starts and stops. I wasn't carrying any extra weight, however, so I was barely sweating.

I'd have to be careful about that or it'd out me sooner or later.

As I walked through the market, pretending to look at small knick knacks, I could feel Sophia behind me. I could almost feel her impatience and boredom, which didn't bother me at all.

The crowd here was different than what I saw at Winslow. At Winslow I could tell the gangbangers from other people because their Ki shone more brightly. Presumably it was because they fought more, and Ki was somehow a measure of fighting spirit. Dad really hadn't described it very well.

Here, though I saw people who looked like they were regular people who shone brightly; a Mediterranean woman, a man and his wife, a couple of teenagers. None of them had anything abnormal about their appearances, but they glowed like they'd been pit fighting for years.

There were enough of them that I had to keep a tight focus on Sophia because I might lose her. In a way this was probably good training in and of itself. Being able to identify someone from their Ki in the middle of a crowd was something that was going to be useful, and I wasn't always going to be in places where most people had dim Ki.

Strength was well and good, but my powers were going to assure that I got that. What I needed to work on was finesse. I couldn't be like a lot of brutes and just depend on hitting people with haymakers. I wanted more than that.

I'd seen martial arts who moved like they were dancing. It was beautiful in a way. I wanted that, not just because it would finally quell that fear in the back of my head but because I envied them.

Sophia had more patience than I thought she'd have. It took almost two hours before she finally started to move away out of range. It had probably been boring to her, almost as much as it would have been for me if I hadn't been focused more on what was happening in my mind's eye.

Maybe I should study chakra and meditation techniques. While they might not give ordinary people any powers, they might be useful for someone who really had Ki to manipulate.

After all, it was possible that I'd had ancestors who had been capable of real miracles; perhaps they had taught followers who didn't have the ability to manipulate those forces, but had kept knowledge of the techniques alive.

I started heading out of the market. Now that Sophia was gone I didn't have any real reason to be here. I'd hit that restaurant, and then I'd run home. It was too late to get the clothes from Garrett.

The sun had already set. At this time of the year, and this latitude the sun set ridiculously early. I wasn't sure why we couldn't have daylight saving's time all year. If we needed an extra hour of sunlight in the summer we needed it twice as much in the winter.

Of course that would mean going to school in the dark, which might not be the best idea.

I reached the restaurant after ten minutes of walking. It was a quiet place called the Golden Panda. Stepping inside, I saw that it was decorated like every other American Chinese restaurant I'd ever been to.

A polite Asian woman gestured for me to follow her to a table. I nodded, scanning the room for a place where I wouldn't be as noticeable. Unfortunately I didn't see any out of the way tables, and so I followed her for a seat.

After getting water I headed for the buffet.

I was starving. It was strange how hungry I was all the time these days.

I tried not to indulge, both because I didn't want to drive Dad into losing the house and because I wanted to lose the layer of fat that covered my body, but the urge just kept getting stronger to eat.

Piling three plates as I high as I could, I went back to my table and started eating. I tried to ignore the stares of the people around me, eating as quickly and efficiently as I could.

I was on my second set of three plates when I heard the sounds of angry people shouting in a language I couldn't understand. I didn't know enough to tell if it was Japanese or Chinese.

I started to eat faster, especially when I noticed that some of the other patrons were getting up to leave. It didn't sound like the kind of thing that I wanted to get involved in.

Eating at a restaurant this close to the docks might have been a mistake in retrospect, but I wasn't done eating. Leaving hungry was going to make me irritable.

Still, the arguments continued, and I felt myself starting to get angry. I'd come here to eat, not to be wrapped up in someone else's drama. The only good thing about all of this was that it would take attention away from how much I was eating.

I was just finishing up with my third set of plates when I heard the sound of a gunshot, followed by screaming.

My head snapped around, and I saw three men driving the kitchen staff out into the common room.

All the other patrons had already left, probably because Brocktonites had a finely honed sense of self preservation. The thought that they might get away without paying might have had something to do with it to.

Was this a robbery?

Maybe it was an ABB protection racket gone bad. Without being able to understand the language there was no way to tell. My table was separated from them by a divider, and all I had to do was sit here and be quiet. There was a good chance that they might not even notice me, especial if I slumped down a little.

That would be the sensible decision. I doubted that I was even close to being bulletproof, not if baseballs bruised me, and that means those guys could kill me easily.

Still, watching those three men screaming at the staff was making my eye twitch. It was like every bit of bullying I'd been subjected to but worse. They thought that just because they had a gun they could push people around.

One of the men looked up at that moment and noticed me staring. He pointed the gun at me and started screaming something that I couldn't understand. The hood of my hoodie was up so he probably didn't even notice that I wasn't Asian.

I held my hands up and slowly stood up.

A moment later I ducked down and ran, heading for the entrance. There was gunfire over my head, but it only took a short period for me to dive out the front door.

I moved to the side of the door and waited. These men, whatever they were planning couldn't afford to leave any witnesses.

A moment later one of the men came charging through the door. I grabbed his arm and turned, smashing his face against the wall. I punched him in the skull, once, twice, three times before he went down.

Punching people in the skull hurt; I was going to have to work on strengthening my hands. Still, it wasn't enough to stop me. I grabbed his unconscious body and I kicked the door open, slinging it inside.

There was a hail of gunfire, but I had already moved to the side of the door. The walls were made of concrete, which meant they'd need bigger guns than what they had.

There was a gun at my feet, dropped by the man I'd just knocked unconscious, but I didn't know how to use it, really, and I didn't want to kill anyone.

I closed my eyes. With my Ki sense I could sense that one of the men was moving toward me, while the other was moving toward the back of the restaurant.

They were intending to flank me, catch me between the two of them and if they did that I was dead.

I could run, but the street I was on didn't have much in the way of cover. It was mostly abandoned storefronts with very few alleyways or anything that I could use to avoid being shot in the back.

Making a decision, I sprinted toward the side of the building. A moment later I was moving around the side; the restaurant was on the corner, its side exposed to the street.

I waited a moment, tracking both of their Ki signatures. The moment the second gunman came around the corner I was already grabbing his hand while I punched him in the face over and over again. It didn't take long for him to let go of his gun, which I kicked away, and a moment later I tore his shirt off and used it to tie his hands together behind him.

The last man was on his way around the building.

Looking up, I tried to judge how far up it was to the ledge. It was a flat roofed building, and it was too far for most people to jump, but I was unusually tall for a girl my size, and more importantly I was unusually light for my strength.

It took a couple of tries, but I managed to jump just high enough to catch the edge of the wall and pull myself up.

I ran along the roof. I didn't have to worry about the people inside hearing me because the last gunman was outside.

A moment later I was crouched waiting.

He stiffened as he saw the body of his companion sticking partway out from the corner.

Cautiously moving toward the corner, gun ready, he was surprised as I jumped down on him, spiraling underneath me. His gun fired, and my ears rang, but a moment later I was pummeling him until he went down.

A moment after that I had him wrapped up in his own clothes. I went ahead and hog tied both of them so they wouldn't get away.

Entering the restaurant, I saw that the staff had already incapacitated the last man, and someone was on the telephone for the police.

I quickly moved toward the buffet, grabbing plates.

It was going to be at least twenty minutes until the police got here, which meant I had fifteen minutes to eat and make my way out.

After all, it was important to have priorities.


	9. Lumnos

"I'm not sure why you would do this," Dad said. "She's fourteen years old and this seems like a lot of work."

We were having dinner at home for multiple reasons; partially because we were discussing things that weren't safe to be overheard and partially so I didn't embarrass Dad or Garrett with how much I ate.

I still hadn't told either of them what had happened at the restaurant, and I wasn't certain that I was going to. After all, while Garrett was sometimes cruel in terms of the things he put me through, I had a sense that he had a basic feeling about my safety. If he thought I was already out in public doing Cape things he might refuse to teach me anything else.

"She reminds me a little of myself at that age," Garrett said. "Less video games and tabletop roleplaying, of course, but still with a drive to be someone better."

"Still... it means you have to spend a lot of time with an underage girl."

I fought the urge to kick Dad under the table. The implication was horrible and embarassing, as though the only reason that anyone would associate with me was because they were a pervert.

Garrett scowled at me. "She runs around telling people that I'd her Dad. I'm twenty three years old... did I have her when I was eight?"

"It's the height," Dad said, glancing at me. "It makes you look older."

"The point is, she thinks of me like I'm old enough to be, well, you. Even if I was interested in girls that age, which I'm not thankfully, she's getting stronger every day. How long will it be before she's strong enough to throw a car at me?"

"Depends," Dad said slowly. "It strikes me that the danger isn't that you'd force her physically. Girls of that age are impressionable, and they are attracted to older guys. You're exactly the kind of person a teenage girl would think is amazing, which would make it easy to turn her head."

"I wish it had been that way when I was younger," Garrett said, chuckling ruefully. "I couldn't get a date to save my life."

"Still... " Dad said.

"I think you're underestimating your daughter," Garrett said. "She's got a pretty good head on her shoulders most of the time, and she knows what she wants. That's definitely not me."

"And if she decides after working with you that it is you?"

"I'm not into little girls," Garrett said bluntly. "Right now I'm not even that interested in dating anyone."

My face felt hot, and I stared at the table. I felt humiliated even though I really hadn't seen Garrett like that. At this moment I wasn't interested in anyone, which had been one of the things Emma had taunted me about, at least when she wasn't calling me a slut.

"Oh?" Dad asked.

"I've tried dating girls who didn't share my interests, and it never worked out well. Girls who do share my interests tend to be competitive and there's hurt feelings. At this point in my life it's just easier to stay out of the drama."

Dad nodded slowly as I started on my second plate.

"Still, it's a big commitment, teaching somebody a martial art. Why bother?"

"It's the same reason I didn't walk away when I saw her being beaten in that alleyway. She's a cape," Garrett said "They're drawn to conflict. That means that she's probably going to end up fighting no matter what I do... and if she dies because I didn't teach her something that could save her life, then that's my fault."

"That's reasonable."

"Also, when she gets strong enough I plan on having her help me move," Garrett said, grinning.

Dad and I both stared at him.

"It's like being the guy with the pickup truck," Garrett said. "If you've got super strength everybody who knows you is going to ask you to help them move."

He turned to me and said, "Better watch that secret identity by the way."

"Are you planning to move soon?" Dad asked neutrally.

Garrett shook his head. "Just keeping it in mind for when the time comes."

They were silent for a bit, eating. The silence was starting to feel awkward enough that I was considering saying something when Dad finally spoke again.

"What are you planning on teaching her?"

"A mixture of martial arts," Garrett said. "Most martial arts are focused on sports aspects, which isn't a problem if you are taking your kid to competitions. Your daughter is planning to learn how to really fight, though, so I'll be taking several different disciplines and mixing them together."

My Dad looked at him with a questioning expression.

"Krav Maga, boxing, Jeet Kun Do, Muay Thai," Garrett said. "Maybe a little Chinese Kung Fu."

"You seem young to have learned all of that," Dad said.

Garrett shrugged. "I started young, really thought it would be cool to fight like the guys in the martial arts flicks. You'd be surprised what you can do if you aren't dating girls much."

"Are you planning to turn my daughter into a cape?" Dad asked.

"She's already a Cape," Garrett said.

"What do you mean?" Dad asked, his voice turning dangerous.

"You haven't heard?" Garrett asked. He pulled his phone out of his pocket, tapped a few things, and a moment later he handed it to dad.

I peered over his shoulder and saw a news article.

"They're calling her the bulemic defender?" Dad asked.

I winced as they both turned to look at me. "It wasn't my fault?" I said slowly.

The fourth plate of food was slowly turning sour in my mouth. I had a feeling that this meeting wasn't going to go the way that I'd planned.

So that's why he hadn't bothered to get me the weighted clothes he'd promised.

* * *

"That went well?"

I really wasn't sure; Dad was keeping his feelings close to his chest. He'd threatened to keep me from training for a month if I did anything crazy like that again. Garrett had also been uncharacteristically harsh.

Still, he hadn't grounded me after I'd explained what had happened, which was a good sign.

"Well enough," Dad said. "I don't think he's planning to molest you or turn you into a supervillain or anything. I'm not sure I approve of his life choices; being a You Tube star seems kind of shiftless."

"You always say not to judge," I said. "He wants something better than a dead end water carrying job, so isn't that a good thing?"

He sighed.

"I agreed to teach you about Ki," he said.

I nodded eagerly, leaning forward. Strength training was all well and good, but learning how to shoot energy from my hands and fly was like the dreams I'd always had of being like Alexandria.

"You should have told me about the restaurant though," he said. He stared at me for a long moment. "I can't protect you if I don't know what's happening."

He hadn't been able to protect me from anything; the bullys, the ABB, the feelings of guilt when Mom died. While it was true that I hadn't told him about any of it, it was because I knew that Mom's death had broken him.

I had a feeling that she was why he had given up on training, on getting stronger, and now that she was gone he had given up on everything else.

"Can I trust you with this?" He asked. "It won't be dangerous at first, but eventually it'll be more dangerous than shooting a gun."

"I'm already strong enough to pick up a rock and smash someone's head if I really wanted to," I said dryly. I was probably strong enough to crush a skull already.

"Missile weapons are different. If you miss somebody, it doesn't stop. It keeps going. There was a gang shooting last week where a four year old girl was killed by stray bullets meant for members of the Merchants."

I dorced myself not to roll my eyes. "I'll be careful."

He was acting like I was going to be some kid playing with a gun and accidentally shooting my best friend. Didn't he know I was more stable than that?

He grabbed my hands. "Taylor, if you really work hard at this, eventually you'll be strong enough to blow up that little girl's whole house."

"Parahumans don't make those kinds of mistakes."

"We aren't parahumans," Dad said. "Not the regular kind. They know how to use their powers from the moment they get them. We don't. If I can't trust you to even tell me when someone tries to kill you, how can I trust you with the power to destroy an entire family accidentally?"

"That wasn't my fault," I said. "If I was a normal peron, I might be dead right now."

"Or they might have driven you out of the restaurant and you'd have been in less danger," Dad said. "We can't know because we don't know what their plans were. My bet is that if you were an ordinary person you'd have left the restaurant instead of continuing eating."

"You don't know what it's like," I complained sulkily. "Being hungry all the time."

"So stop training," Dad said. "If you stop training now your appetite will go beck to normal in a few weeks and you won't have to bother with that gnawing hunger."

I stared at him, shaking my head a little.

"Don't think I haven't experienced it before. I trained in college; the guys in the dorm thought I must have a huge marijuana habit to eat as much as I was. It's part of the cost of what you're doing, and you have to be willing to hide how much you eat and risk people thinking you're bulemic if you want to continue."

I sighed and nodded. I hadn't eaten as much as I would have liked at dinner because of the embarassment and was already planning on going back for leftovers.

"Other Capes don't have to deal with this kind of crap," I said.

"They don't have our potential either," Dad said. "With enough work, you could be as strong as Alexandria. I doubt it will happen though."

"Why?" I asked, stung.

"You'd have to work out for years, decades to get to that level, and you're smart enough that you'll have other things you can do with your life. Why do you think so many professional athletes get so good at what they do but come from underprivileged backgrounds?"

"Why?"

"Because they have to practice for tens of thousands of hours, doing the same thing over and over. It's boring and repetitive and the reason they do it is because they don't have any other way out. A millionaire's kid won't have that same kind of drive."

"I'm not a millionaire's kid," I said.

"But you're a kid with a future. You're smart enough to go to college, to get a career, to move out of this place and go somewhere you can have a good life."

He talked like that was all just around the corner. It was going to be three and a half years befoe I got out of high school, and that was an eternity. Getting strong really was my only way out.

It wasn't like we were going to have the money to go to college, not unless Dad had stashed some money from an old bank robbery of Mom's away.

We lived in Brockton Bay, the city where hope went to die. I didn't have any brighter future than anyone else, and the way things were going with the Endbringer, it was possible that the world itself might not exist by the time I was Dad's age.

Getting strong was the only way I could actually put my mark on the world, make it better than how I'd found it.

"Is all of this a way of trying to weasel out of teaching me?" I asked.

He sighed and shook his head. "You were right about one thing. We really do live in a dangerous city, and it's possible you could be attacked again."

I nodded, leaning forward.

"Which is why I'm teaching you," he said. "This might save your life someday, but if you get overconfident, turn into some kind of Rambo or something it's going to get you killed."

"If you teach me how to fly then I'll be able to get away from Hookwolf a whole lot easier," I said craftily. "There's not that many villains in town that can fly."

There was Purity, Rune and Crusader in the Empire and Lung when he was really ramped up. That was pretty much all I could think of. Most of the flyers in town were heroes; several members of New Wave, Aegis, Kid Win, a few others. Being able to fly would be the best way to ensure that I could get away.

"I can barely float," Dad said. "So it's not going to be very useful unless you get a lot stronger, and use it a lot more."

"You've got to start somewhere," I said. "Why not teach me something?"

He sighed, and said, "Take a seat."

I sat down and he pulled a chair facing me until our knees almost touched.

"What do you think Ki is?" he asked.

"Some kind of life energy?" I asked. "Some people have more of it and some people have less of it, and I'm not really sure why."

"There's ki in every living thing," he said. "In the trees, people, even in the Earth itself because of all the plant like and crawling anumals."

"Why is it stonger in some than others?"

That was a question that had been weighing on me. I'd noticed that some people had stronger ki than others, but there were patterns. The more violent they were the stronger their Ki seemed to be.

"I'm not sure," Dad admitted. "The more someone fights the better they tend to get at it, but why that is I've never been able to figure out."

"The gang kids at school are stronger than the other students," I admitted. I'd noticed that it was true of police officers who walked with a certain kind of swagger too, the ones that liked to throw their weight around.

Sophia had the strongest aura at the school. Did that mean that she was pit fighting or something? She certainly fit the mold as being the most violent person in school, but she wasn't that much more violent than some of the gangbangers.

"Parahumans tend to fight more than most," Dad said, "They start out brighter, depending on how strong their powers are, and they only get brighter the more they fight."

"Can you use it to see how powerful someone is?"

"Within limits," Dad said. "It won't tell you if a guy has a gun for example."

"Right."

Greg Vedar with a gun would be dangerous, but he'd still be Greg Vedar to my Ki sense. That was something I'd have to remember.

Fighting skill wasn't everything. Someone who was smart and had the right weapons could beat almost anyone, even if they had to be carrying a nuclear weapon.

"You watched the Star Wars movies, didn't you?" Dad asked.

"The first ones,' I said. "Not the Earth Aleph ones with the giant frog man or whatever he was."

"Right. Well, Ki is a little like the Force, except it's not religeous and it doesn't have any kind of mind of its own."

"As long as I get a light saber I'm totally cool with that," I said.

Dad looked a me for a moment, his head cocked. "I wonder if you _could_ use Ki that way... "

"I'm just kidding," I said hurridly. "Just teach me what I can do."

"Close your eyes," he said.

I nodded and closed them.

"You've already shown that you're particularly gifted in this; a lot of the family can't even sense Ki without a lot of training and you picked it up right away."

I tried to suppress my grin. It felt nice to get a compliment from Dad. He'd done it all the time when I was younger, but they'd dried up since Mom died.

"Try to feel my Ki."

I focused and then I frowned. "Have you been training?"

"Maybe a little," he said. "Just getting in back in shape."

Was he feeling a little competative with me? He'd said that kind of fighting spirit had been part of what had whittled our family down.

"Now focus on your own Ki," he said.

I tried to sense my own Ki, and for a moment if felt like trying to focus on your heartbeat. I couldn't hear it, but once I felt it I couldn't sense anything else.

He took my hand and said, "Feel what I'm doing and try to make your own Ki do the same thing."

It was hard. I felt myself starting to sweat as I tried to force my Ki to do something that it didn't want to do. It felt unnatural.

"Now say Lumnos," Dad said.

"Isn't that from Harry Potter?"

"You don;t have to say it," Dad said. "But it would be kind of cool."

I sighed. "Lumnos."

Opening my eyes I started as I realized that hovering over my hand was a tiny ball of flickering white light. I could feel that it was made of my own life energy, and it was far smaller than Dad's had been.

Still, it was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen.


	10. Mountain

"So it's all about how to stand?" I asked doubtfully.

"What would happen if someone built a house on mud?" Garrett asked.

We were in an auto salvage yard at the edge of town. The place had been abandoned since its owner had been murdered last year, and the city hadn't yet tried to sell it for back taxes. Garrett's friend was picking through the junk while Garrett was starting to teach me.

"I supposed the whole thing would fall apart."

"So why is a punch or a kick any different? It's all an application of physics; you push against the ground to get more power. It's true in pretty much all sports. Boxers spend a lot of time working on their footwork."

I'd seen the Rocky movies. I nodded slowly.

"This is the boring part," he continued. "But if you don't get this down none of the rest of it will work."

"All right," I said. "And then we'll start learning to punch and kick?"

"You already know how to punch and kick," he said. "The question is, can you do it _well_. Bruce Lee once said 'I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times."

"So you're telling me I'm going to be doing the same thing a lot," I said.

"You can always quit," he said casually.

"No," I said. "I'm good with it."

"Martial arts takes a lot of patience and attention," Garrett said. "It takes years to get really good at it, and even then a lot depends on how much you put into it. There's some McDojos's downtown that'll give you a black belt if you put the time in, but you still wouldn't be able to beat the average gangbanger in a fist fight."

I nodded, tightening my lips.

Everyone seemed to think that I didn't have the patience for this, that I would play around with it and give it up, like a kid who gets a guitar and plays it for a couple of months before giving it up. This was my chance to make a difference, my chance to not only be safe but make Dad safe.

Brutes didn't really have a chance to change the world in the way that Tinkers did, but I still wanted to make whatver difference that I could.

Despite what he'd told me, he showed me several different punches and kicks, and it was hard to remember which ones to use in what situations.

I stripped down to my undershirt, and he looked carefully at my bruises.

"It looks like you're healing about three times as fast as a regular person. That's pretty crap for a brute, but we'll take what we can get."

He slipped on pads, but the only padding he gave me was for my head.

A moment later he was beating the crap out of me. I tried to fight back, but he was blazingly fast, so much so that I had trouble seeing what he was doing. When he hit me, it hurt. He kicked me, and I went flying.

"Physics is a bitch," he said as he reached down to help me up. "No matter how strong you are you still weigh only a hundred pounds. That means that you'll be easier to throw around than a big man, and it'll be even more important for you to stand right.

A few more times on the ground and I understood what he'd meant. If I wasn't able to set my feet so I could push back against whatever hit I took, I'd go flying. While I was in the air, with nothing to push against I was basically helpless.

Hopefully that wouldn't always be true, but for the moment it was what I was going to have to deal with.

He eventually took pity on me and slowed down and showing me what I was doing wrong. I doubted this was how most martial arts instruction worked; starting with a beating and working backward, but it was helping me see just how far I had to go.

Garrett had told Dad that a lot of McDojos gave their students false confidence where they'd always done everything in slow motion, without full contact sparring. People expected their enemies to react a certain way in a real fight when people were unpredictable.

There were breathing exercises that he expected me to practice on my own before the next time we met. I wasn't sure what the purpose was; something about strength.

That was the best part of the whole session, actually getting to fight even if I was clearly outmatched. I knew I was going to have other bruises to go with the ones I already had, but it didn't matter.

"You're already tougher than an ordinary person," he said. "The thing with the balls helped I think."

I didn't feel tougher. His punches and kicks had hurt, although considering that I only weighed a hundred pounds the fact that getting kicked in the stomach hadn't driven me to my knees meant that he was probably right.

Dodging practice had actually helped me avoid a couple of his attacks, although it was possible that he was slowing them down some to give me a little confidence.

"The thing is," he said. "You don't really get stronger by doing a lot of little reps. You get more toned maybe, but you've got to work with heavy weights to get really strong."

I had an uneasy suspicion as I looked around at the piles of discarded cars. When he got that look in his eye it usually didn't bode well for me.

"My friend has some items he wants you to load into the truck," he said.

I looked over at his friend, the one we'd met in the diner that first day. He was skinny, wearing a green T-shirt with some kind of stylized lantern on the front. He hadn't even bothered to look over at us, even when Garrett was slamming me onto the ground. He almost seemed like he was in some sort of fugue state.

His friend was most likely the Tinker he kept talking about; after all we were in a junkyard and I'd heard that beginning Tinkers had to scavenge parts to build things that their power compelled them to build.

They didn't admit to it, of course.

"So this is the pickup truck thing you were talking about?" I asked.

He stared at me for a moment then chuckled. "Problem with being strong is that people are going to want you to help them move. Yeah, pretty much."

I stared at the first engine. It had already been pulled out of the car and was sitting on some pallets. I reluctantly reached under it, trying to find a good grip on something that was large for my arms. I eventually figured it out, although I ended up getting grease all over the front of my T-shirt and jeans. It was monstrously heavy, and I could feel my arms and legs and back straining as I picked it up and staggered toward the back of the trailer.

"That's why I told you to wear crappy clothes," Garrett said smirking as I tried to wipe the grease off my shirt. "Just twelve more and we're done."

I grimaced.

Not all of the engines were sitting conveniently outside on pallets. Some were still inside cars. I had to help rip the outsides of those off until I could get to the engine, although his friend was really good about unbolting them before it was time to pull them out.

Even with my growing strength, carrying some of the engines and heavier parts was difficult. Garrett had shown me how to lift with my legs and not my back; after all a back injury could prematurely end my career before it even started. Still, some of the angles I had to bend and stretch in made my back groan.

If I was going to keep doing this kind of thing I was going to need to do some kind of exercises to strengthen my back.

By the time we'd filled the covered flatbed trailer being pulled behind a heavy duty pickup truck, my back and legs and arms were all trembling and aching. The back of the trailer was full, and Garrett closed it with satisfaction after tying everything down.

"Don't want some crazy Final Destination kind of stunts," he said. At my look, he asked, "Haven't seen the movie?"

I shook my head.

"Philistine," he said. "We're going to have to broaden your horizons."

Dad kept saying that too, but I wasn't sure what he meant.

The truck started up and its wheels spun under the weight before finaly finding traction. A moment later the truck was finally pulling away.

I'd have asked where they kept getting all of their vehicles, but considering that his friend was a tinker with access to a yard filled with parts, it wasn't surprising.

"Why haven't people stripped this place?" I asked, looking around.

There were people in Brockton Bay right now stripping abandoned buildings of their wiring and their copper.

"It's far enough out of town that not a lot of people know about it," Garrett said. "And a lot of the stuff is too heavy to carry, and a lot of it is rusted."

I had little doubt that both of them had already stripped the place of its most valuable and most easily salable parts. I was starting to get the idea that Garrett and his friend tended to be a little sketchy sometimes.

"So it's ok to tear stuff up here?"

"There aren't any owners left," he said. "Maybe the city, but they aren't looking like they plan to do anything with it any more than they did something about the Boat Graveyard."

I let myself slide down the side of a car to side on the ground. I was covered in grease and sweat, and my muscles felt like they wouldn't ever work again.

Garrett handed me a water bottle, and I took a deep drink.

"You couldn't have lifted a quarter of what you just did a couple of weeks ago," he said. "You're getting stronger fast."

"That's not the only thing that's getting better," I said, fininshing the water in one long drink. I pulled myself up and I set the bottle on the hood of the car, turning and walking toward Garrett.

"Oh?" he asked.

"I want to show you something that I just learned," I said.

I turned and focused on the water bottle I'd just left on the hood of the wrecked Chevy Impala. I closed my eyes for a moment, feeling for my Ki.

A moment later I opened my eyes and I _pushed_ outward.

Energy flew from my hand and slammed into the plastic bottle, making it fly off the hood of the car. It had taken me almost two hours to get to the point where I could weaponize my blasts, and they were still really weak, but I I knew they wouldn't stay that way.

Garrett was staring at me, his eyes wide.

"It only hits about as hard as a baseball," I said apologetically "And it tired me out pretty quickly. Still, it's a start, don't you think?"

"What else have you figured out how to do?"

Frowning, I concentrated, pulling my Ki inside myself for a moment. I jumped straight up, five feet into the air, and I hung there, my momentum stopped as I started slowly floating down to the ground.

"That's it," I said.

I was sweating, but it felt pretty good to be able to do it without smashing my head into the basement roof. Dad had insisted that we move down there after I'd broken his favorite lamp.

Doing both of those things in a row tired me as much as running twelve miles, but Dad had assured me it was going to get a lot easier with practice. He'd been able to fire a lot more energy blasts than I had.

"That means you're going to be able to do some Crouching Tiger stuff," he said, looking suddently excited. "This is gonna be amazing."

"Crouching Tiger?"

"What's wrong with your father?" Garrett demanded. "Hasn't he shown you any quality media? I suppose you can tell me which My Little Pony episode jumped the shark/"

"None of them," I said.

He gritted his teeth. "We're explanding your education, young lady. If all you learn is fighting you'll turn into an uneducated meathead. I suppose you can play movies at home?"

I nodded slowly. This sounded like homework, and not the kind that was going to get me closer to my goal.

"The other thing I want you to do is follow me," he said.

I followed him around several cars stacked up on top of each other.

There was a massive old, battered dump truck with its wheels removed sitting on the dirt. Massive chains were connected to it, leading to something that looked like something I'd seen attached to oxen in medieval movies.

It was a yoke.

"Pull it," Garrett said.

"That's got to weigh a ton," I said.

"A regular car weighs a ton and a half, this one weighs a lot more than that. Are you afraid?"

I shook my head and a moment later he showed me how to use the yoke.

It was like pushing a wall; immutable and beyond anything I could do. No matter how I strained myself I couldn't move it. I felt my face going red as I strained, but there wasn't the slighest amount of give to it.

"It'd be a lot easier if it had wheels," Garrett said. "Or if the dirt wouldn't pile up in front of it when you finally do move it. Are you ready to quit?"

I shook my head.

It was twenty minutes before he was finally convinced that I wasn't going to be able to move it.

"They say that Glory girl can throw one of these," he said. "And even she doesn't go up against Lung."

"Crap," I said. I'd been so pleased that I was strong enough to move those engines.

He stared at me for a moment, considering. "Did you ever hear about the story of the man who moved a mountain?"

I shook my head.

"There was a man in India in the late fifties, before Scion or parahumans. He lived in a remote mountain village, happily with his wife. It was only five miles to the nearest town as the bird flies, but the only way to get there was over fifty miles of mountain trails."

Garrett shook his head. "His wife slipped and fell one day, and because no one could get her to a hospital on time, she died."

"That's terrible," I said, although I wasn't sure why he was telling me this story.

"He could have given up, shrugged his shoulders, maybe even moved. Instead, he sold his goats to pay for a hammer and a chisel and he got to work. He quit his job and he beat the mountain every day with his tools."

Cricking his neck, Garrett looked down at me. "He didn't have any parahuman powers. All he had was a will and determination. It took him twenty two years, but eventually he carved his way through the mountain, twenty five feet high, thirty feet wide and three hundred and sixty feet long."

I tried to imagine how much work that would have been, but couldn't.

"Suddenly the hospital was just five miles away instead of fifty. The local children could go to school right next door. He'd beaten the mountain by not giving up, even when the people around him thouught he was crazy."

"This is a true story?"

He nodded.

"That's unfortunately where you're at. People like Alexandria just get to have power by having one really bad day. You're going to have to work for it. If you want to be great you'll have to sweat blood and tears."

He gestured toward the truck. "This is your mountain. You'll come out here and try to move this several times a week until you finally move it."

I stared at him.

"You'll be practicing those blasts of yours too," he said. "And watch the movie; you'll see what I mean."

I watched the movie that night, and to my surprise I actually liked it. The women fighting in it moved like dancers, unconstrained by anything as pedestrian as gravity. They manipulated gravity, using it to anchor themselves, to land accurate strikes, even to hold opponents in place.

Even if I couldn't fly for a long time, if I could do something like that it would give me a massive advantage in at least certain kinds of fights.

The characters hadn't been able to throw balls of energy either. Being able to do that while bouncing all over the battlefield would make me a lot harder to fight.

That wasn't going to happen for a while though. Garrett had given me my first set of weighted clothes, including a one hundred fifty pound weighted vest and bands for my arms and legs. I'd have to wear long sleeves, but I still had remnants of bruises so I'd have had to cover them up anyway.

An ordinary person shouldn't wear weights all the time on their arms and legs because it could cause damage to the joints, but Garrett thought that my puny amount of enhanced healing would be enough to keep it from being a problem.

Additionally, the weights on my arms and legs were only forty pounds, just enough to keep me toned. It wasn't to make me stronger, really, but to help me get faster.

It would slow me down to normal levels and maybe even make me a little clumsy at first. This would help me keep the secret if Sophia tried anything.

The one thing I'd have to watch out for was falling onto my classmates if Sophia tripped me, or having them try to steal my clothes during gym class. If they noticed how heavy they were they'd know I was a Cape.

Speed was as important as strength, and I was going to have to get faster if I was going to fight the way I wanted to. My first time sparring with Garrett I'd had trouble with remebering what kicks and punches to use; part of that was inexperience, but part of it was that I just couldn't think fast enough.

Worse, I knew that he was going slow for me. I'd seen him fighting the ABB guys when we'd first met, and he'd been like greased lightning. I wanted to be that fast, fast enough that I could punch someone before they even realized they'd been hit.

I had the uneasy feeling that I really was going to have to keep chipping away at the mountain if I was ever going to get what I wanted. I just hoped that it didn't take twenty two years.


	11. Honesty

A sound of movement in the distance alerted me, even over the sounds of my own labored breathing.

Running in Brockton Bay at ten in the evening was stupid for anyone, but Garrett had kept me long at the junkyard, and he was making me run there and back in my weighted clothes. It was nine miles each way, and I was carrying two sets of clothes; one set I was wearing and the other in my backpack.

Apparently regular washing machines would be damaged by these clothes, so Garrett insisted that I give him the soiled ones, and he replaced them with fresh ones every time we trained. I had weighted clothes in the form of both my orange Gi and black sweat clothes.

I wasn't feeling any stronger, though, which was frustrating.

An hour of running to the junkyard, two hours of being beaten up followed by another couple of hours of moving equipment culminating in trying to move the dump truck. That was followed by another hour running home, and sometimes I stopped off at one of a couple of places to eat. I tried to alternate days so that staff wouldn't recognize me, especially since one restaurant owner threatened to ban me.

It was like that every day, which meant I was exhausted right now and hardly in my best form. My backpack had weighted clothes in it, which meant I was carrying twice the weight and I'd just run eight miles.

My Ki sense only caught a glimpse of something at the edge of my range. It was huge; bigger than human size and it didn't move like a human either.

I carefully slipped my backpack off my shoulder and dropped it to the side of the alley. It was heavy enough that no one was likely to steal it, and I was going to need any advantage that I could get.

After what had happened to me before, I wasn't going to take any chances. Anyone who attacked me was going to have a bad time.

As I got closer, I could sense multiple bodies moving. They were clumped together, almost like they were waiting for someone. I had to assume that it was me.

I pulled my hood over my head. While my prison outfit was orange, while running I wore a black hoodie. The last thing Garrett and his friend needed were people noticing someone in a bright orange outfit running toward the junkyard every day.

They were probably expecting me to come around the corner. Doing what they expected would be playing into their hands.

The smart thing to do would be to run, to jump over the fence and make my way home. Yet I couldn't let this go; if they were trying to ambush me, then that meant they knew something about me. They'd just keep trying, the way Sophia was still trying to follow me at least twice a week.

Turning the ambush against them, the way I'd done before would be the smartest course. They might be expecting it, though, if they knew who I was.

The one thing they wouldn't be expecting was a head on attack.

I tried to expand my Ki sense as far as I could, but I didn't sense anyone else close by.

Taking a deep breath, I felt a little strength coming back to my limbs. Hopefully it would be enough.

I began to move, running as lightly as I could although it felt like my feet were pounding on the pavement, driven by my enhanced weight because of my clothing.

They were already starting to react; I could feel a small flare in the Ki of two of them. As I turned the corner I dropped, sliding like I was playing baseball.

Bullets flew over my head. I bounced upward, lunging toward the two men with bald heads and facial tattoos standing over a woman. Her face was bloodied and her clothes were torn.

I saw red.

As one of the men tried to point his gun at me, I swept his feet out from under him. His gun went off into the sky. I kicked him once in the crotch and he gave a girlish scream. The other had already pointed his gun at me and I rolled. I felt something whiz by my ear, and the gun sounded shockingly loud. My ears rung.

The first man had dropped his gun; I grabbed it and threw it at the other man's head.

There was an ugly sound, almost like a watermelon being cracked open, and the man dropped to the ground like a stone.

Everything was suddenly, shockingly silent except for the moans of the man I'd kicked. The entire encounter had taken less than ten seconds.

I kicked both guns down the alley, and I checked the man I'd thrown the gun at.

His skull was caved in.

Shit.

The girl was still alive, which was something, but there was no way she'd be able to call the police.

I rifled through the dead man's pockets before I found a cell phone. I pressed his thumb against the phone, and then I dialed 911.

"I'd like to report a robbery and a rape," I said. "One man is dead, the other will need medical attention."

My voice sounded a little shaky, and my hands were definitely shaking. What had I done?

"Are you injured, miss?"

"No," I said.

"Are you a parahuman?"

"I'm in the alley behind the Home Depot on forty seventh street," I said, ignoring the question. "I'm not staying. You should probably hurry."

I hung up the phone, and then I started wiping as many things down that I'd touched with the sleeve of my jacket; the phone, the gun, everything I could think of.

I pulled the man's belt off and used it to tie him up. He didn't fight me, and I wiped the belt off too.

The woman looked like she was injured, but she was going to survive. As swollen as her eyes were I doubted that she'd be able to identify me.

"You don't know who I am," I hissed in his ear from behind. "You never saw me."

I could hear the sirens coming. I made my way back to the alley, where I picked up my backpack. A quick wall run led me up to the top of the two story building, and I crouched on the roof as I saw patrol cars pull up to the entrance of the alley followed by an ambulance.

We were close enough to the wealthy part of town that the response time was good. It was only going to get worse the poorer the areas I came to.

They'd be looking for me soon, so I jumped from one building to the next. I grimaced when I saw that I was damaging the rooftops, so as soon as I could I dropped to the street and began to jog again.

I raced as quickly as I could given how tired I was. A couple of times I dodged a patrol car racing by.

I'd killed a man.

The thought of how ashamed Dad would be, of how Garrett would look at me with disgust bothered me more than the actual killing had. He'd been beating and raping a woman, and if anyone deserved to be killed he had. Still, the thought that I'd done it accidentally haunted me.

What if I'd lost control with Sophia in the middle of school. I was barely a brute, nowhere near as strong as Glory Girl or Hookwolf or Lung.

Yet I'd killed a man without even trying to.

My mind kept going over and over the fight, thinking about all the things I could have done differently. They hadn't been waiting for me; they'd been occupied until they heard me running in the alley. I could have dropped down on them from above, punched the first man and dropped him, attacked the second man before he could react.

I could think of at least three things I could have done, none of them resulting in someone dying.

Even the man I'd kicked wasn't likely to recover without Panacea's help. I'd likely maimed him with my kick, done at more than human strength. That didn't bother me as much as the first man, though. At least what had happened to him could be reversed if he got to Othalla.

I'd listened to all my Dad's warnings about misusing my power and I'd rolled my eyes. I was in control, I'd thought. None of the things he'd said applied to me.

I hadn't realized just how squishy normal humans really were. Even a normal person could kill someone else with a single blow. Someone with four or five times the strength had to be four to five times as careful.

Shame enveloped me as I ran, and my vision grew blurry.

Even though I'd talked about wanting to be safe, at the back of my mind I'd really wanted to be a hero. Was that even possible now that I'd killed someone?

Heroes killed all the time, but usually under the auspices of the Protectorate, and usually under a set of very strict rules. Most of the time they let villains live, and there was a sort of unwritten code.

Dad had told me about it, and at the top of the list was one rule.

Thou shalt not kill.

It was a little like the Geneva Convention, only much less formal. People didn't kill because that would lead the other side to escalate, and there was never a guarantee that you would win every battle.

You didn't torture, you didn't attack people's families; if you did, then people would do the same to you. The gangs didn't always follow the rules to the letter, especially if they saw some sort of advantage to be had, but they followed them in general.

Did this mean that the Empire would come after me?

I could possibly fight a few of their lower powered Capes, although a lot of them had pit fighting experience. I needed to be able to hit someone before I could hurt them, and I'd heard that most of them were hard to hit.

There were a lot of them too, and their heavy hitters were people I wouldn't be able to touch. I couldn't fight ghosts or metal spikes coming out of the ground.

Purity could fry me from the sky and I'd never see it coming. The one disadvantage to my Ki energy blasts, other than the fact that they weren't powerful enough to really hurt anyone was that they were slow.

Purity attacked at light speeds, and she'd be able to dodge my blasts even as she was turning me into ash. I wouldn't be healing back from that.

Even if I were someone able to increase my training until I could take them on, they'd be able to get to Dad and Garrett and his friend. They might even attack Emma because she'd once been my friend.

The only advantage I had was my secret identity. I didn't think that the one man left alive or the girl had gotten a good look at me. Likely all they'd seen was the hoodie.

None of that included the fact that the police would be after me. I'd killed someone, and as long as I wasn't proven to be a parahuman the Brockton Police department would be after me. While it was true that they were underfunded and underpaid, they did at least try to bring murderers in.

Had there been video cameras anywhere along my jogging route?

I wasn't sure, and it was something I was going to have to pay attention to now. If they'd caught a picture of my face it still wouldn't be easy to find me. I was too young to have a driver's license, and high school yearbooks weren't exactly in any federal database.

Usually they didn't make any great effort to find the murderer unless there was political pressure. They simply waited for him or her to commit another crime that they were unlucky enough to be caught at and then they cross referenced their faces.

I could possibly argue that I had been defending the woman; I'd been the one who attacked them so self defense was likely off the table, although the man had been pointing a gun at me. The bad thing was that lawyers cost money, and with the way I had been eating we had even less money than usual.

We'd toured the all you can eat restaurants on the far side of town, and Dad started buying cheaper foods that he could make in large quantities; pastas, rice, beans, vegetables, oatmeal and the like, things he could make in big pots.

Despite all of that, I was eating him out of house and home.

A good lawyer could cost tens of thousands of dollars, money that we didn't have and even putting the house up for collateral Dad wouldn't be able to afford bail for me.

I forced myself to calm down, even as my running slowed to a jog.

The odds were that I wouldn't get caught unless I kept doing things like this. The best thing I could do would be to lie low and avoid getting into fights with gang members or other normal people until I learned to control my own strength.

Then I'd be able to come out as a hero if I wanted and no one would be the wiser. If someone did eventually find out, I'd have the good deeds I'd managed to accumulate to help get me acquitted.

Unless they were threatened by the gangs, Brockton bay juries tended to be very lenient on people who hurt Nazis, especially if they were doing it to protect other people. I'd probably get away with a manslaughter charge at best and spend a few months in prison, assuming they didn't think I was going to try to break out.

As I saw my house coming up to the left, I sighed in relief. I couldn't feel anyone behind me with my Ki sense; it didn't seem like the police had followed me or that the Protectorate was lying in wait for me the way my wildly active imagination was telling me.

I could sense one person inside the house, and from the signature it was most likely Dad. His Ki had grown stronger over the past three weeks that I'd been training and I wasn't sure why. Was association with me enough, or had he been training too in secret?

How had he dealt with being strong enough to break people's heads by accidents. He'd mentioned being as strong as I was now at one point, and men tended to get into fights more often than women.

Part of me wanted to ask him, but that would lead to a discussion that I didn't want to have.

I wasn't going to tell him what had happened tonight, and I wasn't going to tell Garrett if I didn't have to. It wasn't that I didn't trust them, although sharing a secret about murdering someone was a very good way to end up in prison.

It was because I didn't want to see the disappointment in either of their eyes. Dad had warned me over and over about how dangerous all of this was, and I hadn't listened.

I'd enjoyed having my Ki blasts go from something like a baseball to hitting like a much slower moving rifle round. The fact that I could now lift car engines without feeling like I was going to have a hernia had seemed like a miracle.

Pushing myself to finding new limits, always moving the bar forward; it had seemed so exciting.

There was a saying from an old comic book, something about responsibility. I didn't really remember the whole thing. It had to do with there being a responsibility to having power, whether you were a politician or a superhero.

Garrett had been having me watching a lot of Kung Fu movies; he said that while a lot of what was done was unrealistic for a normal person, I might be able to do some of the Wuxia moves with my powers.

The movies seemed to believe that loyalty, honesty and bravery were values to be aspired to.

Not telling what I had done didn't feel particularly honest or brave, but I wasn't going to say anything to anyone.

My arms felt like spaghetti as I opened the door with my Key. I was exhausted, not just physically, but mentally and emotionally as well.

"Dinner's ready," Dad called out. "How was your day?"

"Fine," I forced myself to call out. Did I sound normal, or had I given something away?

"Take a shower and then come down for dinner. Why don't you tell me about how things went?"

The funny thing was that watching all the Kung Fu movies together had been bringing Dad out of the funk he'd been in since Mom died. He loved pointing out AL the flaws in the fighting, which told me more about how much he knew than he realized.

We'd made it into a regular thing on weekends, a sort of father-daughter time that we hadn't had in a long time. I'd been treating it like training, even though I was starting to actually like the movies. Dad saw it as just time together.

I forced myself to say "I'll be down in ten minutes."

Maybe the shower would give me time to calm down and help me pretend that my day had been great.

Somehow the thought of forcing myself to lie and smile and pretend to be enthusiastic felt like it was going to be harder than pulling that dump truck.

At least the dump truck wasn't going to be harder to pull every day.


	12. Technique

"I'm proud of you, Taylor," Dad said. "I half expected you to have blown up the house by now."

Guilt clawed its way up my throat but I ignored it. I'd managed to keep my secret for the past two days and I wasn't going to blow it all now.

There wasn't any mention of what had happened on the Internet. I'd had to be careful about how I tried to look it up; get too specific and it might lead the police directly to me. Still, there was nothing on the boards about a new cape in town.

That didn't stop me from looking over my shoulder all the time, waiting for cops to come pulling up and arrest me. It was affecting me even at school, and sensing my nervousness Emma had redoubled her campaign of emotional terrorism.

Sophia still didn't seem to know what to make of me. She's shoulder checked me a couple of times, and I'd barely managed to move out of the way so that she didn't notice that I was heavier than I ought to be. With my luck the school would consider weighted clothes a weapon, and they tended to have a no tolerance policy for anyone who wasn't a gang member or otherwise connected.

Those who were, of course, were treated much more circumspectly. It was probably because MS. Blackwell didn't want her tired slashed or worse.

"You've stayed out of fights and you've been following directions. I'd had a couple of talks with Garrett and he says you've been really dedicated."

Less so over the past two days, although I didn't say so.

Garrett had questioned me about my lack of enthusiasm, and I'd brought up the bullying as a reason for it instead of a symptom. He'd seemed to believe me.

I'd had a couple of nightmares where I'd kicked the gun and it had been various people I knew who'd been left on the ground. Mostly I'd been trying to put it out of my mind by staying focused on other things. Unless I somehow developed a time travel power there wasn't anything I could do to change what happened.

"I think it's time to teach you a family technique," Dad said. "It's a way of gathering the Ki in your body and releasing it all at once."

I looked up at him, interested.

"My great grandfather spent fifty years developing it, and then he died," Dad said. He grimaced. "It was completely unrelated; apparently he was involved with a woman who wasn't his wife, and the woman's husband ran him over with a steam roller thirteen times."

"Really?"

"Apparently it didn't work the first couple of times, and the man wanted to be thorough."

"How strong is this attack?"

"It multiplies your usual attack by a factor of ten," Dad said. "Possibly more if you get really good at it, but that's the best I've ever managed."

I stared at him, wondering for a moment why it had taken him so long to even mention that this existed. It took me a moment to realize why. I forced myself to avoid wincing.

My energy blasts were already like a rifle shot. What would ten times that be?

"It's pretty useless, though," Dad said.

"Why?"

"It's really slow," Dad said. "Somebody would have to be an idiot to simply stand there while you get ready to attack them."

I frowned.

"In a real fight people don't sit and wait for you to attack you. Maybe if they were sure they could tank whatever you have and are trying to intimidate you, like Superman in the old comics."

"So why teach it to me?"

It sounded like something I wanted to learn even if it was slow. Anything that gave me more options was good. If I'd had more options I might not have the headaches I was dealing with now.

"You could use it to break through a wall or something if you ever get trapped somewhere," Dad said. "And it's possible that someday you might actually fight an idiot; you never know."

"What's it called?"

"My grandfather never came up with a name, but my father decided to call it after an old Hawaiian king. Saying the name works really great as a way to pace the attack."

"So which king?"

"Kamehameha," Dad said. "For obvious reasons I'm not going to show you this in the house."

"We could meet at the junkyard," I suggested. "After I'm done with training and Garrett leaves. Just say you are picking me up for a celebratory dinner."

He stared at me as though he was wondering how I'd gotten good at making up stories. A moment later he shook his head and said "I'll be there at nine."

The next day I was on tenterhooks. Having Garrett and Dad in the same place was going to give them an opportunity to compare notes, something that objectively I knew wasn't really going to be a problem, but that part of me suspected that would cause everything to collapse.

I barely even noticed Emma's attempts at being vindictive, which seemed to anger her more than anything I'd done in a while. Sophia wasn't in class, which was a relief. She'd seemingly decided that I'd had enough time to heal and she'd started the bullying again.

She was really my greatest danger at school. I was getting stronger daily, and it was possible that I would hurt her badly when she was trying to hurt me. I still wasn't sure how tough I was getting, except that when baseballs actually hit me they felt like they stung instead of like huge pains. They weren't leaving welts on me either.

The fact that Garrett was talking about a tinkertech version of the machine made me work harder to avoid getting hit so that he didn't follow through. While I didn't mind getting stronger, getting beaten up by a two hundred mile an hour ball would probably hurt a lot more.

I was surprised when I finally reached the junkyard to find Dad already there waiting, talking with Garrett. Neither one of them looked like they were angry or that they had any idea what I had done, so I approached them.

Neither of them seemed to notice me.

"So you've been increasing the weight of her clothes every day?" Dad asked.

"She hasn't even noticed me adding five pounds here and there, and that means that she never gets discouraged."

I frowned. I had been getting discouraged by my lack of progress.

Furthermore, if I'd realized just how much stronger I was getting, I might not have thrown the gun as hard as I had.

Of course, that might have meant that I'd be dead right now too. There was no way for me to know.

"Isn't it dangerous for you to fight her?" Dad asked. "With her being so strong?"

"It's a challenge," Garrett admitted, "But she hasn't hit me yet without me meaning to. I've got a friend who's a tinker; he's working on a Bacta Tank."

"You know capes?" Dad asked flatly.

"We've been friends since college," Garrett said. "I think he needs somebody to keep him grounded, or he'd never leave the lab."

"Anyone I would know?" Dad asked.

"Nah," Garrett said. "He doesn't go in for that hero or villain stuff. He just wants to build things."

"So this Bacta tank," Dad said.

"It's from Star Wars," Garrett said. "Heals people faster than normal."

"He's built it?"

"He's still figuring it out," Garrett admitted. "If he ever gets it running, we might actually have some money for once."

"What would you use it for?"

"How many people would like to heal from knee surgery and avoid all the pain?" Garrett asked. "Or from cosmetic surgery?"

"You wouldn't be able to mass produce it," Dad said neutrally.

"We wouldn't need to. Even if we charged a couple of grand there's people that would pay it. Do ten a week and we're making a million a year. That's maybe ten hours a week plus whatever time is needed to set up the appointments; we could probably hire people to take care of that part of it."

"There's people that would come after something like that," Dad said. "Gangs especially, even if just to make sure the competition didn't get it."

"That's why we have to be careful," Garrett admitted. "It's not the only thing he's planning on building, but all of them have flaws like that. If you make too many waves like you are going to really improve the world or something, the Nine tends to come and visit. Nobody wants that."

I shuddered.

Having the Nine visit Brockton Bay was the worst thing I could imagine happening to the city short of an Endbringer attack.

"We've got to keep things on the down low," Garrett continued. "Because King F doesn't work that well against guns and energy blasts."

"I keep trying to tell Taylor that, but I'm not sure she's ready to listen."

"Oh, she'll be able to tank energy blasts some day," Garrett said. "At the rate she's going she'll be able to fight Purity and Lung some day."

"You aren't going to encourage her to do something that stupid are you?" For the first time I could hear anger in Dad's voice.

Garrett shook his head. "I'm not trying to get her killed. Once we have the Bacta tank up and running, we'll have an option if she actually does manage to hit me."

Or if I was injured too, I thought.

I still dreamed about that rush of power I'd had when I'd been beaten and then healed. It had been a huge upgrade in strength without all the work.

It wasn't that I intended to let people go out and beat me half to death. That had apparently been tried by some of our ancestors and it had never ended up well. Apparently the difference between halfway dead and all the way dead was a lot slimmer than you'd think.

Still, being able to fly would be amazing. It would make all the rest of this worth it.

It was everything I'd dreamed of when me and Emma had talked about being heroes. I hadn't just wanted the adulation of the crowds that Alexandria got; I'd wanted to be able to fly, to be free of gravity and able to simply soar without a worry in the world.

"I'm here," I said.

I wasn't really winded that much despite having run nine miles in less than an hour. The world record for a marathon was a little over two hours, and that was twenty six miles. It meant that I was going to have to start running faster if I intended to get stronger, even though that would leave me tired before fighting Garrett.

I slipped into the old office to change into my Gi. Garrett had unlocked it once and no one had ever bothered to come and re-lock it.

"It looks like a prison uniform," Dad said, staring at my outfit critically.

"That's what it used to be," Garrett said. "Cosplay. That's not the original outfit of course, but I think white is kind of boring."

I'd have preferred black, frankly, but he'd vetoed that immediately as having no style. He didn't want me looking like a mooch, whatever that was.

"Get into the horse stance," Garrett said.

I complied, and Garrett walked around me, commenting on my form. By this time, of course, my form was flawless. He'd been right about stance being important; that was becoming more and more clear to me every time we sparred.

A moment later Garrett attacked me.

It was like it always was, being hit from every direction with blows that were too fast to see. However, over the past few days I'd been able to see a blur at least, which was a massive improvement.

I didn't have any trouble remembering what to do now either, even if none of it was good enough to get anywhere close to him.

"How's she going to learn if you move that fast?" Dad asked from the sidelines. He was leaning up against a car.

"I'll show her afterwards," Garrett said. "I've been keeping it simple, using the same kinds of attacks so that she can learn to anticipate what I'm doing. When she gets to the point where she can, we'll move on to the more complicated stuff."

He was wearing padding again; I suspected that it was actually some sort of tinkertech armor, since his friend seemed so generous about giving out inventions. I had to wonder what his specialty was.

He wasn't here today, possibly because I'd called and told Garrett Dad was coming.

Over the next two hours Dad made some pretty insightful comments about what we were doing, which suggested to me that he knew a lot more about fighting than he'd let on to me. I wondered if he would be willing to give me extra training, tricks I could surprise Garrett with.

I was getting better; Garrett said I was learning quickly, although he said it wasn't unusual to make big steps forward at first only to slow the better you got. Apparently the distance between being a complete newbie and someone who knew a little about fighting wasn't that much. However, for Bruce Lee to improve was a pretty steep climb.

He said the same was true of any physical skill. For someone like Michael Jordan, getting better was almost impossible; the same could be said of anyone at the very top of their game.

Without any engines or other parts to move for his friend, Garret had me dragging cars all over the place. It was probably working out the muscles I would use for the dump truck and it gave my usual muscles a chance to rest.

At least these cars had wheels, even if they were mostly flat. It helped somewhat.

Garrett left a little early, and then I was left along with Dad.

Dad handed me a bottle of water, and we waited until we felt Garret's ki retreat into the distance. I was sweating by this point and drank the water down in a single long drink.

"I want you to feel what I'm doing with my Ki," Dad said when I was done.

He closed his eyes and cupped his hands at his side.

"KA" he said loudly.

I could feel the Ki in his body concentrating. Normally it came from every part of the body, but it was gathering into his hands.

"ME"

It was growing, the power he was drawing. It was like he was drawing the power his body was generating and holding it, even as more power kept coming.

"HA"

I could see the ball of energy growing in his hands. It was a whitish blue color, crackling with more power than I'd ever been able to generate with all of my training.

"ME"

He pulled his arms back, palms cupped around the growing energy ball.

"HAAAAAA!"

Pushing his arms forward, I was blinded by the light as it flashed forward. The car Dad was facing exploded, and I barely dodged as a hubcap came slicing through the air where my neck had been.

Dad looked exhausted. "It's not just slow, but it's draining."

The car was on fire now, all that was left being the framework. I stared at it, then looked at Dad, his face looking somewhat strange in the firelight.

Had I misjudged how strong he was?

I'd assumed that I was already stronger than he'd been at his strongest, but maybe I was wrong.

"All right," Dad said. "Take the horse stance."

I did.

"Feel your Ki," he said. "Pull it together into a single point."

I nodded.

It was harder than it looked, although just firing energy blasts required doing that a little bit. I closed my eyes and began gathering as much power as I could.

The hardest part was holding it while I gathered even more power. It wanted to be released, and it was a little like holding it when you really needed to use the restroom. It was a low level pain but it didn't feel like I was hurting myself.

Dad held my hands, showing me how to cup them together.

"Ka" I said.

"ME"

I could feel the power growing in my hands.

"HA"

I pulled my arms back.

"ME"

"HA!" I said, pushing the power out of me.

I was blinded for a minute by the light, and it was followed by a sudden wave of exhaustion flowing over me.

I'd hit a car on the bottom of a pile of cars, and when it exploded, the rest of the cars groaned and started to fall. Dad grabbed me and pulled me down as a tire flew past the place where my head was.

I stared at the hole I'd made. It had blown right through the car and through the car behind that and through two more cars beside. The engine blocks were still intact, but it had pierced right through the sides of the cars, blowing them up.

Dad's blast hadn't penetrated as much, but he'd destroyed the engine. I wasn't sure which was the greater feat.

"If you ever use it, you'd better be sure that nobody is behind whoever you are trying to hit," Dad said. "Or it might not be pretty."

I'd fallen to the ground and I stared at the fire that I'd created. This was more than I had expected.

It meant that I was really a cape, with all the power and responsibility that implied. It also meant that it would be even easier to kill someone without really meaning to.

I would have to be even more careful than I'd thought.


	13. Interlude Sophia

aylor Hebert was a parahuman.

There wasn't any other explanation that made sense. The bruises on her body should have led to broken ribs at the very least, but she'd moved easily, showing barely any pain. How had she been injured that way anyway?

The best Sophia could come up with was that someone like Rune had hit her over and over again with chunks of rock. There hadn't been any record of a fight on the Internet, but the Empire didn't always advertise their fights, especially if they lost.

Sometimes they had initiations for their new parahumans as well. While it was clear that Hebert would never fit in with the ABB because of her race, and she didn't seem like the type to be involved with the Merchants, she'd fit right in with the Empire, despite her name.

Racists were just weaklings who blamed the system for their own inadequacies. They couldn't measure up and so they would blame anyone else. The only surprising thing was that Hebert hadn't gone running to the Empire before.

At first Sophia had followed her hoping to find out what had happened. Was she being beaten by her father, or was she involved in something illegal? Either way, it would have been excellent ammunition to use against her.

But she'd run and kept running that first day, mile after mile, showing a level of endurance that should have been impossible for someone of her physique. It had only been a couple of months since Hebert had been puffing away, out of breath in physical education class when they'd done the three mile run. Now she ran that distance as though it was nothing.

That had intrigued Sophia, and she'd started trying to follow her. She'd developed numerous strategies for following prey over the past couple of years, and none of them had ever failed her in the long term. Yet somehow Hebert had slipped away the first time she'd seriously tried to follow her.

It could have been a fluke, a lucky break on the girl's part. Sophia had tried again, and it had happened again.

Once was an anomaly; three times was a pattern.

Somehow Hebert always knew where she was. It had taken Sophia a while to see it, but eventually she realized that there was a certain stiffening in Hebert's posture when she became aware of Sophia, and once she was, there was no tricking her. She had eyes in the back of her head, and she always seemed to find the right moment to vanish.

Sometimes a bus would pass by and Hebert would simply vanish behind it. Other times she'd walk into an alley, and then she'd be gone even though the walls were too high to climb that fast.

Sophia had gone through the walls to see if she too could slip through walls, but she was never there.

The ability to stalk her prey was one of Sophia's biggest strengths. It stung her pride to think that Hebert could tell if she was being followed. What good was a Shadow Stalker who couldn't stalk?

Hebert had gone from being clumsy and weak to being as slippery as an eel practically overnight. In addition, she was running miles tirelessly. Sophia had been running for years and she suddenly wasn't able to keep up with a scrawny weakling?

There'd been times when Sophia had managed to keep up with her for three miles, but Hebert hadn't even looked winded.

She had to be a parahuman. It was the only thing that made sense.

Hebert pretended to be the same weakling she'd always been, but sometimes she slipped. There was a look in her eyes now and again, the look of a predator sizing up her prey. It was infuriating to see Hebert sneaking looks, staring as though she was wondering whether she could take Sophia in a fight.

Was she being trained by Hookwolf and Cricket?

She _was_ moving differently now, more like a trained fighter than the clumsy, uncoordinated movements she'd had before.

During gym class she moved with extra care, as though she was afraid of hurting someone. Dodgeball wasn't any fun against her because she always made sure to step into the first ball of the game, intentionally ducking out. She always made it look as though she was trying not to get hit, but Sophia was watching and could tell it was deliberate. Nobody wanted her on their team because they thought she was horrifically clumsy, which helped to keep her from being called back in..

Still, Sophia had continued her surveillance efforts. She'd worked out Hebert's range when she'd realized that Hebert didn't seem to notice if she was further than a block away. The girl was tricky even with that, but Sophia had managed to follow her farther and farther along the route she was taking every time she followed her.

She took different routes, but always in the same direction. Sophia had hoped to find out where the Empire was training their new parahumans, to give her a reason to prove to Hebert that she wasn't the big dog that she undoubtedly thought she was.

Sophia had even used some of the money she acquired from the Empire and the ABB to buy an expensive pair of nightvision binoculars. It had been painful, paying five hundred dollars for binoculars, but Sophia had comforted herself that it would be useful whenever she was doing a stakeout of ABB drug dens or Empire dog fighting rings.

It cost money to make money, after all.

Following Hebert got easier after that. Sophia only followed her two days a week. She didn't follow her the other days hoping that Hebert would get complacent. Patience was the hunter's greatest ally after all.

When she did follow her, she tried different things to see what would work the best. She'd tried getting ahead of Hebert, taking a cab to a point further in her run, but Hebert still always found a way to avoid her.

Still, it all added up. She was able to get a little farther each time she followed Hebert, and the direction she was going became more and more obvious.

It had taken her three weeks to finally follow her to a location outside of town. Without walls or buiildings to conceal her, she'd had to depend on her dark clothes and ability to duck down into ditches by the shoulder of the road.

In the darkness she'd been afraid that she would lose Hebert, who had just been a blip at the end of the road. Fortunately Hebert had seemingly thought she was in the clear, because she'd run straight to a huge junkyard out in the middle of nowhere.

Following her was harder inside the junkyard; the last thing Sophia needed was for Hebert to stop suddenly and for Sophia to accidentally end up moving inside of her range. Sophia was forced to scramble from the top of one pile of ruined cars to the next.

Fortunately there were lights on in the center of the junkyard, and it was clear where Hebert was going. That made it easier to look for a vantage point that would give her an unobstructed view of what was happening without leaving her backlit against the lights from the city, which lit the sky from behind her.

She had to circle around looking for a good spot. If she'd been fully corporeal she'd have stumbled over the mounds of rusty metal, sliding down and dropping pieces of scrap onto her head. Her shadow state made it easy; she was able to leap farther than humanly possible and she could find purchase before becoming fully corporeal.

Powers didn't make sense; she should have fallen through the floor every time she tried to move through a wall, but instead she had a certain amount of control which made traveling over rooftops or the top of mounds of cars easy.

Sophia phased through the door of a sixty seven chevy which was sitting at the top of a huge pile of cars. Sitting inside, she brought her binoculars up to her eyes. They only had seven times the magnification, so the block and a half distance Hebert was away seemed like a hundred and twenty five feet.

That was too far away to identify faces, although one of the men was obviously Hebert's father. She'd seen him picking her up a time or two from school, and both of them seemed to look something alike.

The other man she didn't know.

Hebert vanished inside a ramshackle looking office, and shortly afterwards was out wearing a martial arts GI that was a hideous orange color. It looked a little like a prison uniform, which made Sophia smirk. If Hebert really was part of the Empire she'd better get used to wearing things like that.

The unknown man proceeded to beat the hell out of Hebert.

Sophia had to admit; she was impressed. The man was blindingly fast and used a combination of several martial arts. She'd been studying for years and she'd never even seen some of the moves the man was using.

Hebert looked slow and clumsy next to him, although she at least made an effort to counter what he was doing. Obviously she was still learning to fight. The man slowed what he was doing to show her after a thirty minute full contact beatdown.

Sophia had enjoyed watching Hebert getting beaten. The slow parts were interesting as well, although it was incredibly frustrating not to be able to see clearly what was being done. Sophia could see the broad strokes, but the finer details were lost.

Only the fact that she knew some of the moves helped her recognize what he was doing.

It would have been nice to hear what they were saying as well, but from experience Sophia knew that speech tended to be unintelligible past thirty feet. Investing in a microphone might be worthwhile, although she'd have to save up some money for a while.

Most of her money was going toward better weaponry and toward martial arts training. She was paying a private tutor three times a week with money she liberated from criminals, and the man she was learning from was obviously not half the fighter Hebert's trainer was.

Where in the hell had she found him? Sophia had done a lot of research before she'd found her trainer, and while he went full contact also, he'd never beaten her like Hebert's trainer had.

Was it because he knew she was a brute and could take it?

Finally the fighting was over.

So this was what Hebert was doing; going through an insane training program, obviously with the approval of her father. Was it because she was planning to attack Sophia or did she have something bigger in mind. Was she planning to go out and try to be a hero? A villain maybe?

It was impossible imagining a weakling like Hebert becoming effective either as a villain or a hero. Of course, before tonight Sophia couldn't have imagined Hebert taking a beating like that without crying. Obviously the girl had a certain amount of determination.

Why didn't she show it at school?

Standing up for herself was the most basic thing anyone had to do to show the world that they weren't going to let themselves be pissed upon, yet Hebert took it day after day.

Was she some sort of perverted masochist?

Sophia blinked suddenly. Were they having Hebert drag a car?

She'd seen people pushing cars before, but pulling was probably harder. The wheels looked flat too. Sophia wasn't sure if it was a superhuman feat, although she suspected that it probably was since Hebert kept doing it for long past the few minutes most people would have managed it.

It went on for more than an hour, dragging cars back and forth.

It was strange.

Most brutes didn't have to work out; when they got their powers they were as strong as they would ever be. They learned to fight, but using weights wasn't really part of the training. Sophia had been jealous of them in the past, because weights absolutely were part of her training; fortunately she'd been able to slip into the school after hours and use their weights all she wanted.

Why were they using weights with Hebert? It didn't make much sense.

Her trainer left, and Hebert was talking to her father.

Sophia sighed.

She hadn't found an Empire training base, unless that man was someone she hadn't heard about. It wasn't likely that he was Hookwolf; the man was too lean and slender.

Even the thing with the cars wasn't definitive proof. It was possible that Hebert was just going through some sort of training from hell in an effort to catch up to Sophia. Maybe the girl wasn't a parahuman and that was why she needed to go through all of this.

As if that would work.

Sophia had been training for years, and she had dozens of real fights under her belt. Hebert would never catch up because Sophia fully planned to keep getting better.

Furthermore, this kind of extreme training was a good way to permanently hurt yourself. The human body wasn't made to do these kind of things over the long term without taking permanent damage. Hebert would strain something trying to catch up, and the next thing you know all the training would end.

She heard the sounds of shouting; although she couldn't make out what was being said. She turned and

put her night vision goggles to her face; she saw Hebert's father moving strangely.

A moment later there was a flash of light. She cursed and her binoculars fell to the floor. Had they used a flash bang?

She reached down and scrabbled blindly around the floor until she found the goggles. She blinked; her eyes were watering and she still couldn't see.

It took her almost a minute to be able to see again, and when she did she saw a car on fire, lighting up the area.

She cursed and ducked down in the car, feeling the whole car shift under her from the sudden movement. It suddenly occurred to her just how precarious her position was, perched inside a car at the top of a hill of cars.

Hebert's father was a parahuman!

Her mind raced trying to think of who he might be. There weren't many actual blasters in Brockton Bay and most of those were female.

He could be anybody from out of town, but according to Emma Taylor had been in town for her entire life. Was he living here and working out of Boston?

Sophia wasn't as familiar with the Boston Cape scene. She'd preferred to focus on immediate enemies and not people who she'd probably never encounter.

When her eyes finally had the spots vanish, she looked cautiously back in the same direction. Hebert was making the same motions.

This time Sophia didn't use the night vision goggles. Even so her eyes were dazzled when the beam of light exploded from Hebert's hands, blasting through a row of cars.

Hebert was a Cape!

She was a blaster, a thinker and a low level brute.

Adding thinker to any of the other categories was dangerous. Fortunately Sophia was a partial counter to most brutes; she could phase her crossbow bolts through most types of brute armor and she could escape from the brutes she couldn't affect.

Hebert and her father shut off all the lights and headed in the opposite direction, heading towards town.

Sophia sat in the car in silence for almost half an hour. The revelation that Hebert was a parahuman was shocking in all sorts of ways. Should she tell Emma?

On the one hand it would be amusing to watch Emma squirm, realizing that that weakling Hebert had developed powers before she had. On the other hand, if she told Emma, she might stop tormenting Hebert, which would be a disappointment in another way.

Sophia scowled.

Finally she slipped out of the car, floating soundlessly through the air from the top of one mound to the next.

She'd just reached the edge of the junk yard when she became corporeal again.

Her world suddenly exploded with pain as electricity flowed through her body. Lights suddenly flooded the space she was in and a loudspeaker blared.

"You are under arrest for multiple counts of assault with a deadly weapon."

There were vans everywhere with the distinctive PRT logo. A man was holding some sort of a lance toward her. They'd been waiting in the dark for her, probably with some kind of heat sensing device telling them where she was headed even through the mounds of metal. Tinkertech was bullshit.

They'd probably seen the flashes of light coming from the junkyard and they'd come to investigate. Seeing Sophia phasing in and out had probably alerted them that this was a parahuman incident.

Most likely they'd suspected a tinker was out here, and so they'd brought vans with Armsmaster there to strong arm whoever was out here into joining up with their little army of mindless drones. The vans were probably an implied threat; the PRT had some parking garages on this side of town that they thought the public didn't know about.

Hebert had baited a trap for her without even noticing.

Sophia started laughing, and she was shocked again. A moment later she was wrapped in containment foam, left unable to move, and with her body still shaking from electric shock she couldn't move at all.

Crap.


	14. Bounty

Sophia didn't return to school the next day.

It was a relief in a way; it had been getting harder and harder to dodge her over time, and eventually she would have followed me all the way to the junkyard. I still wasn't sure how she was that good at following me, although an ugly suspicion had begun to take root.

What if she was a parahuman?

It would explain the times when my Ki sense blanked out, and her ability to get to places that even I had trouble getting to with all of my enhanced strength and new parkour skills. She was too good and there was no reason for her to have skills like that unless she was some sort of rooftop burglar.

While I could have seen Sophia as some sort of criminal, she seemed like the type more likely to bash someone on the head than to break into their house and steal.

Still, there weren't that many African American capes that I knew of in the Bay; the Empire had seen to that, either killing them or driving them off. There was Skidmark and some kind of a darkness controller that had made a short splash before disappearing. He'd probably either been snapped up by one of the gangs or killed.

That was why Dad didn't want me going out as a Cape, even if it would have made my training a lot more effective. Cape fights could be deadly, but even if they weren't the odds of an independent Cape staying that way were astonishingly low.

Tinkers were at the top of everybody's lists because of their versatility and inability to protect themselves. Brutes came a close second because the gangs loved making open displays of power, and Brutes and Blasters were the best for that.

The PRT generally didn't publish their parahuman threat ratings, but enough had leaked out over the years that fans had put together a pretty accurate estimation of what they were. From what I read online I probably didn't even count as a Brute 2, since they were generally immune to small arms fire. My Ki sense would make me some kind of a Thinker, and I was a Blaster, again probably of a low level. I wasn't much more dangerous than someone with a gun unless I used the Kamehameha, and that left be exhausted and practically useless.

It had been bad enough that I'd had to accept a ride from Dad last night rather than run home.

I might have been counted as some sort of Mover, but that power was so weak that no one would even notice it.

If they were stronger I might have gotten onto someone's radar, but I was barely superhuman.

If Dad was right that wouldn't always be the case, but I couldn't help but wish for powers like everyone else had, where you got your powers all at once. It would be so much easier, and I wouldn't have to go through the constant exhaustion and frustration of training all the time.

I'd have been able to focus on training to fight instead.

Garrett said I was advancing quickly, but it felt like a snail's pace to me. He kept talking about it taking years to properly mastering a martial art, and I wanted to do it now.

Still, I was doing a lot better than I had at first, and I was working up the courage to ask Garrett how not to hurt people. That would make things better for everyone.

If I kept getting stronger I'd need it with him eventually anyway. Even somebody as fast as he was could slip, and all it would take was a little mistake for me to crush his skull.

Whispers went back and forth between the students all morning, but none of them were glancing at me, and some of them looked shocked.

I went to lunch in the cafeteria for once. Emma had been withdrawn all day and had only made half hearted attempts to taunt me, and Madison had barely even bothered.

It was nice being able to sit and eat undisturbed, even if the amount of food was minuscule. I'd bought the most calorific foods I could get and had bought three desserts, but no one was even paying attention to me. I probably could have eaten more.

As I sat I listened to the casual conversations around me, in part because I was hoping no one was planning on ambushing me while I was overconfident.

From the table behind me I could hear some of the Empire kids whispering urgently to each other. I strained my ears and it took me a moment but I could just make out their conversation.

"Stormtiger's pissed," one of them was saying. "He's put out a reward for anybody who can finger the bitch who did it."

"I thought they got the bitch," a second, female voice said.

"She didn't know anything. Said it was a girl our age wearing a black hoodie. It doesn't matter; she won't be saying anything to anyone else anymore."

I froze.

"How much are they offering?" a third voice asked.

"Nothing to any of us, fool. The Empire takes care of its own. If we let people get away with killing our people, when will it ever stop? The reward if for the outsiders who don't understand honor."

"You really think they'd go to all this effort for one of us?"

"If we were full members maybe," the third voice said. "But didn't I hear something about him being related to one of the bigwig, a nephew or something?"

"Does it matter? You help bring in the bitch who killed him and you'll be moving up in the world. You probably wouldn't even have to go through the Initiation to get in."

"Why tell us?"

"She's our age, she could be going to school. Where he was killed was closest to Winslow. You do the math."

"It's not like any of us are going to find her anyway," the third voice said. "Tall dark haired white girl our age, could be any of a thousand people."

"She had a hoodie."

"So do you. So does everybody in this school. It rains enough that hoodies are pretty popular."

The first voice said,"They'll get her sooner or later. If she thinks she's a hero then she'll think she's got to stop the 'injustices' the Empire's involved in. If she's working for one of the other gangs they'll use her again."

"And if she's just some rando?"

"Then we'll have to get lucky. They've got brothers going through all the martial arts studios in the city, well, the ones that the gooks and the chinks don't have locked down looking for her."

"You know a lot," the third voice said.

"That's because I know when to shut up and listen," the first voice said. "And because I'm not just some wanna be who thinks he knows what's going on. You think the Empire doesn't have people in this school who know what's going on? Maybe even people who don't wear the tats or talk the talk?"

"Spies?" the second voice said, clearly sounding shocked.

"Recruiters. People who already believe go for the obvious targets, but some of us are good at feeling people out that just don't know that they believe the truth yet."

I hadn't realized the Empire was so subtle. It made sense though.

There might have been a point where I'd have been vulnerable to someone if I hadn't realized they were Empire. After all, I knew I wasn't racist, bnt Emma and Sophia and Madison had left me with a need to belong.

People who'd acted like friends?

They'd have started out small, saying little, slightly racist things. While I hoped I'd have had the courage to push back, it would have been easy to have gone along with it, and once you made a few concessions further concessions got easier to make.

The entire time you'd be telling yourself that you weren't a racist, and by the time you realized where they were leading you, you'd have convinced yourself that they were the only defense against the Asians, against the Merchants, against all the people who were trying to tear the city down.

They probably didn't use that tactic on random kids, only on people who they thought had promise.

Was that why they hadn't bothered with me? Because they hadn't thought I was worth it?

Or had they thought I was Jewish like Emma had loudly suggested once, early in the bullying? That would have taken the sails out of any of the Empire kids who would have had a problem with a black girl bullying a white girl.

After all, in their minds, Jews weren't white at all. What did they care of one of the subhuman races bullied another member?

What would they have thought if they'd realized that I wasn't even as human as Sophia, the subhuman?

Their conversation had already moved on to something about who was sleeping with who, as though the fact that the Empire had pt a bounty on my head wasn't important.

I had library time fourth period. It should have been a study hall, but with Dad driving me last night I'd had extra time to finish the homework.

Convincing the librarian to let me use one of the computers wasn't hard at all. I think she'd seen some of the bullying and was secretly sympathetic to me, even if she hadn't really done anything in particular.

I spent fifteen minutes on the boards, and when I finished I sat back, my breath leaving me explosively.

It was all true. The Empire was offering $50,000 and a single favor to anyone who turned me in or gave them information about me. The woman I had saved had been left hanging from a lamp post outside the police station at some time late last night.

She'd been tortured, but had been alive when she'd been hanged, at least according to the fact that she'd been gagged. There were even pictures posted of her bloated face as police tried to pull her down using the kind of equipment that electric company workers used to lift themselves up to the lines.

The woman hadn't really gotten a good look at me, but it was possible that the man I had maimed might have had a better look. That probably meant that the Empire was either going to try to spring him from jail, or they'd have whoever they had one the inside do the questioning.

Either way, they'd be a step closer to finding me, and I couldn't find any records online of where he was being held. Was it the PRT, or was it the police because no one realized a parahuman was involved.

He might even be at the hospital; I'd likely hurt him badly.

I felt a sudden surge of guilt over the woman, but I tamped it down quickly. It was possible that they would have murdered her anyway, or they'd have had her killed if the men had been caught. Letting her continue to be victimized wouldn't have made her life any better.

This was on them. They'd killed an innocent woman for the crime of testifying. How many people had they made disappear over the years?

If I was stronger I could fight back; I could become a hero and force them to stop what they were doing. The problem was that I wasn't strong enough.

Bullets would still kill me, and I probably wouldn't survive an encounter with any of their stronger capes.

This all meant that I had to be ready for when they did come after me, and that meant training specifically how to deal with each member of the Empire.

Some of them would be easier to deal with than others. Those who didn't have defensive powers would fall easily if I hit them with a rock, assuming I was willing to kill.

People like Hookwolf would shred me, and even if I was willing to die they'd likely go after my Dad afterwards. He wouldn't be as easy to catch as they'd think. Assuming they didn't bother to send parahumans after him he might even be able to escape.

Still, in the end they'd either kill him, torture him, or force him to live the rest of his life on the run, always looking over his shoulder.

I couldn't allow that, and that meant that I had to be ready.

The only way I could get ready would be to tell Garrett what had happened. The thought of telling him, of seeing the look on his face when he realized what I had done made me sick to my stomach, but I was going to need his help.

I felt a buzzing inside my jacket. It was my cell phone, hidden inside the jacket.

The only people who had this number were Garrett and my Dad.

I finished my meal and dropped the tray off in the slot. I left the cafeteria as quickly as I could and I pulled out my phone when I was out of sight of anyone.

I slipped into a bathroom that I checked with my Ki sense and I checked my phone. It was Garrett and he'd left a message.

" _The yard is blown_ ," his voice said tinnily in my ear. I should have sprung for a better model of phone." _Someone tipped the PRT off and they've been poking around all morning. Meet me at my old workplace and I'll pick you up_."

Who could have betrayed us?

So he wanted to meet me at the Water company and he was going to show me the new spot.

All day I fretted about what I was going to say to Garrett when I finally met him. For once I was actually dreading the end of class, which was a first since I'd come to this school.

The short run to the water company, less than three miles seemed almost too easy, even with the extra weight I was carrying. I was almost to the street when a van pulled up beside me and I saw Garrett's face peering out at me.

Looking around, I got in the van with him, and we were soon off.

"I'm sorry about the junk yard," I said.

"It'll die down," Garrett said, his eyes on the road. "The PRT likes to keep track of all the places where Tinkers can get their supplies. It makes recruitment easier."

"I thought they weren't supposed to go after secret identities?"

He shrugged. "If they should happen to stumble across one in the middle of a routine investigation who's to know."

There was a long silence and I looked for something, anything to talk about.

"Why doesn't your friend join the Protectorate," I asked. "They've go the best lab equipment, and they'd pay him a lot of money for his inventions."

"They'd neuter him," he said. He looked at me and shrugged. "His words, not mine. We've heard it can take months to get a new invention approved and half the time they're rejected for no good reason. He doesn't want to have to do things because some focus group says it polls well."

"Is that what being a hero's like?" I asked.

I'd always imagined working for the Protectorate to be a little like being in one of Dad's old comic books; sitting around in a base somewhere until something dastardly happened and then rushing to save people.

Of course, I'd never really read those comics, so what did I know?

"The Protectorate is government, even though they pretend like they're not. That means there's red tape for everything. Half the reason they can't do anything in this city isn't just because the Empire has just as many Capes, it's because they have their hands tied by the government and aren't allowed to be constructive."

It was hard to believe, but then again, why weren't Alexandria, Eidolon and Legend going from city to city cutting the heads off the major gangs? They could have made short work of the Empire, leaving the local Protectorate to mop up.

Even if they only did one major city in a month they'd have cleared a hundred cities in a two year period.

People acted like the criminal gangs would rise up and attack all at once if the Protectorate got serious. The gangs didn't like each other any more than we liked them. They'd fight among themselves until they realized they were going to die if they didn't.

I glanced at Garrett, wondering how I was going to tell him.

He hit the brake, though, and we stopped outside a non-descript warehouse.

"I've had a talk with my friend," Garrett said. "He's pretty impressed with you and he thinks it's time to bring you in."

We drove forward and for a moment it looked like we were going to crash; instead we slipped right through the wall.

"My friend's the best Tinker in the world," Garrett said. "Even if people don't know it yet. He can build _anything._ "

I stared at the interior of the warehouse.

It looked exactly like the set of that Willie Wonka movie, with a river of chocolate and candy everywhere.

"What... What is this?" I asked.

"We've built our own holodeck," Garrett said.

Garrett stepped out of the van, and a moment later I did as well.

The world shifted around us and a moment later we were on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise. It was the Next Generation ship. While I didn't consider myself a nerd I'd seen a few episodes in syndication.

Garrett's friend was sitting in the Captain's chair wearing an authentic looking outfit.

"Welcome, Number One," he said to Garrett, "Taylor. You can call me Leet."


	15. Shangri La

"You made all of this possible," Leet was saying. "Replicators don't just make things from nothing, they have to have mass to convert, and a crapload of energy."

So he'd been using all the engines I'd been carrying as mass for a replicator? Unlike Garrett, Leet seemed to love to talk, and unfortunately he reminded me a lot of Greg Vedar. He didn't seem to have much in the way of social skills and so he tended to ramble, jumping from one pop culture reference to another as though that would be enough for me to think he was suave and cool.

He was laying my role in its creation a little thick, too. He could have easily built robots to have done the work for him, and it would have only slowed him down a few days or weeks. He seemed as if he wanted something.

Dressing up as a Starfleet captain for our first real meeting didn't make for a good first impression for our first meeting in his cape persona either. If I wasn't a fan it would make him seem more like a nerd; if I was a fan it would seem like he was trying too hard to impress me.

Besides, why not dress like Willie Wonka? It would have gone better with his image as a whimsical chessmaster, a creator of dreams.

"We like to call this place Shangri-La," Leet said.

If they were calling it that, why not start with something Asian? Was it because I'd been attacked by Asians, or was it because they thought I wouldn't recognize whatever scene they started with?

"We're going to use it to make videos and the production values will go through the roof!" Leet grinned, and seemed as enthusiastic as Greg Veder.

"We're willing to use it for your training too," Garrett interjected.

"As long as you are willing to help in some of our videos," Leet said quickly. "Nothing in this world is free after all."

"What kind of videos?" I asked suspiciously. While I didn't think Garrett would be into anything sexual, I didn't know Leet at all. Did he even know I was just fourteen?

"We'd want you to wear costumes and work for us when we're doing things outside the holodeck," Leet said. "Trying to build up a reputation."

"So you want me to be a henchman," I said slowly. It was better than what I'd thought he was talking about, but not by much.

"Not for anything criminal," Garrett said quickly. "Just pranks mostly. We did the whole Mario cart thing recently."

I blinked. "That was you guys? Did you do it in front of my school so I could see it?"

Leet grinned. "I thought it would impress you."

It hadn't impressed me so much as seemed a little crazy and reckless. It actually made me think a little less of Garrett to think he'd go along with something like that.

"Why are you even bothering with all of this?" I asked.

"What?" Leet asked.

"You've got a holodeck," I said. "You could get movie companies to pay you millions of dollars for special effects and sets and pretty much all they'd need would be lead actors."

Leet looked flabbergasted, as though that hadn't even occurred to him.

"You could make your own movies, and they wouldn't even have to be very good; after all they wouldn't even cost you anything other than some programming time."

Leet opened his mouth.

"You could even rent it out to the PRT to use as a training facility."

"Nobody can know about this place," Leet said quickly. "Do you know how much power this place uses? I had to build a matter to energy reactor in the basement, and enough computing capacity to dwarf everything else in the world."

"And you want to use it for You Tube videos?" I asked. "You could be the Tarantino, the next Roddenberry."

"I'm not that original," Leet said quietly. I could barely hear him.

"What?"

"I'm not that good at coming up with my own stuff," he admitted. "Even my inventions are mostly things from comics and movies. There's no way I could write convincing dialogue or make music that doesn't suck. Making movies takes a lot of skills that I just don't have."

For some reason Garrett cleared his throat.

Leet shook his head. "I mean, those ideas sound awesome, but they'd require that I share this place with other people, and sooner or later someone would talk. The next thing you know, the gangs are coming in and taking over. I can't fight the Empire or Lung."

He sounded slightly panicked at the last point.

"But you're willing to piss off the Protectorate?"

"They won't kill you or torture you," he said. "They'll throw you in a cell for a little while and then you're out."

"Why can't you fight the Empire?" I asked.

He stared at me.

"Aren't you the best Tinker in the world?"

"That's debatable," he said, looking embarrassed. "Dragon can actually make stuff that can be replicated. I'd consider that a little better than what I can do."

"Still. Are you telling me that you couldn't build something to counter Lung?"

"Some kind of sedative maybe," he said. "Maybe a phazer as long as he hasn't ramped up too much."

"What about something that keeps him from being angry?" I asked. "Like a happy gas or something?"

"I could," he said, his view going a little vague. "It'd take a little doing."

"You've got a replicator," I said. "The limitation can't be materials."

"It's more involved than that," he said irritably. "You have to know what you are building before you can replicate it, and then you have to program that thing into the computer."

"Have you ever thought that you might have to fight the gangs?" I asked. "After all, you'll be going out in public and they won't know that you mean to avoid them."

He shook his head.

"Sooner or later they'll be coming for you," I said. "You're a Tinker and if they know what you can do they're going to want you."

"If I look like I'm harmless they won't come after me," he said. "That's why we're going to do a prank show."

"No parahuman is ever harmless. Not even Panacea. If they see what you can do, they'll come for you, and you have to be ready for that."

He shook his head stubbornly.

"Then you'll always be afraid," I said. I leaned forward. "You know why I work out like I do?"

"Because you're a fitness freak?"

"Because I was beaten until I almost died, and I didn't want to be afraid every time I saw some Asians on a street corner," I said. "Because the only way to not be afraid is to get strong enough to push that fear away."

He didn't say anything, just staring at me wide eyed.

"I could have given up, but I've been working like crazy to get strong enough so that nobody will ever be able to make me feel like a victim again."

I saw something in his eyes, an acknowledgment that he felt like a victim.

"The guys from the Empire," I said. "They're bullies, every one of them. The same for Lung, although he's a little lazier about it."

I didn't mention the Merchants; I didn't have to. They were bullies sometimes and the bullied other times. The one thing they were never was good to have around.

His expression tightened at the mention of bullies, and I realized that my hunch was right. He'd been bullied in the past and he'd hated it. Still, he didn't look like he was willing to fight to overcome those fears.

It made me think less of him, but I fought to keep it off my face. I needed his help if I was going to train, and it was possible that there were other things he could do to help me. Give me some kind of flying platform, maybe, or some kind of Tinkertech weapon like a staff or something I could use to fight people.

Nothing bladed, though; the last thing I needed was more blood on my hands.

"I'm not going to get killed so I can go out and be a hero," he said.

"You think being a rogue isn't honorable?" I asked. "It's probably even harder, because at least heroes have allies."

He frowned at that.

"Whatever happens, I'll help you," I said. "After all, I owe Garrett, a lot."

He stared at me for a moment, then sighed. "He's going to call himself Uber when we're out in public. I'm sorry if I sound a little irritable; I've had the same argument with him. He didn't put you up to this?"

I shook my head.

"I'll think about putting some defenses in," he said. "It'd be pretty cool to have some phazers anyway. I'm still not going to do the hero thing."

He stepped away from me and said something to Garrett before heading toward a trap door in the ground. Presumably that was where his lab was located.

"He wants me to try to talk you into the job," Garrett said when he was gone.

The holodeck around us was currently off, showing walls covered in a grid that didn't look at all like what I remembered from the show.

"And you don't want to?"

"I didn't make the deal with you trying to get a henchwoman," he said. "This is entirely separate... use of the holodeck will make your training go a lot faster."

"There's a complication," I said, grimacing.

He stared at me and didn't say anything. That was the worst response as far as I was concerned because it left the burden of the conversation on me.

"You've heard about this new thing with the Empire about the bounty?"

"Yes..." he said slowly.

"That may have been me that they're looking for."

He was silent for a long moment, staring at me. "So you're saying you killed someone."

The silence between us grew more pronounced. I stared back at him, wondering what he was thinking, whether he was judging me, thinking about dropping my training, what?

"He was raping a girl," I said. "What else could I do? I just... didn't know how strong I was."

Garrett didn't seem to know what to say. He looked uncomfortable, and he licked his lips and shifted his position. The silence stretched out even longer this time.

"Have you told your Dad about this?" he asked. "I thought he warned you about fighting other people?"

I shook my head. "I can't. He'd be so disappointed in me."

Garrett seemed to be considering his next words carefully. "Is that it?" he asked. "No emotions at all about it?"

"About what?"

"About killing someone?"

"He was going to shoot me!" I said. "I threw a gun at him and I didn't mean to kill him."

"You did though," Garrett said.

The silence between us grew heavy, and he stared at me like he was expecting me to break down and start crying. I wasn't going to oblige him. I'd cried a lifetime worth of tears over Emma, and there was nothing left.

"What, you want me to say that I have nightmares? That I see his face every time that I'm not thinking about something else? That I see her face because I wasn't able to protect her?"

I shook my head. "I don't feel anything."

He glanced down at my hands, and I realized that they were shaking. Why were they shaking?

"It's just... if I hadn't intervened, would they have left her in that alley, alive?" I asked. "That's the thing I've been trying not to think about all day. Did I get her killed?"

I had been seeing her face on and off throughout the day, and some of my shame about telling Dad had as much to do with her as because of what I'd done to the man. After all, he'd sort of deserved what he'd gotten, even if I never would have done it deliberately.

"You've got no way of knowing what they had planned," he said. "But you weren't ready."

I stared down at my hands, realizing suddenly that these were the hands of a killer. It hadn't seemed real, but the more I talked about it the more real it felt. I didn't like it much.

"Sometimes the brain has a kind of fuse in it," Garrett said. "It protects us from things we aren't able to handle by making them not feel real. They call that denial."

"I know it happened," I said, shaking my head. Why did my gut suddenly feel tight?

"I'm willing to keep working with you," Garrett said. "But Leet... this is going to freak him out. I'm not sure he's going to want to be in the same city as you."

"Do you think he'd sell me out?" I asked.

He shook his head. "That would require that he have contact with the gangs, and he knows that you might tell them about him if you get caught. He's loyal, but he's... not brave."

It was the first negative thing I'd heard him say about his friend.

"So why tell him?" I asked.

"Because he's my friend," Garrett said chidingly. "And friends don't put their friends in danger without letting them know. You should tell your father for the same reason."

I frowned.

If my father knew that the Empire was coming, he could work on getting stronger himself. That might make it harder for them to take him, and possibly use him against him.

Of course, that would mean telling him.

"We can work on teaching you control," he said. "And I'm going to tell you when I increase the weights you are using. It's getting too dangerous for you not to know how strong you are."

"Do you think you can convince Leet?"

"I'll try," he said. "If I can't, we'll just have to find someplace else to train."

I looked down at the floor. "Do you think they'll find me?"

"Maybe," he said. "Probably not, but sometimes we leave clues we didn't know we left. If you keep fighting them it becomes certain that they'll come after you."

"I'm not planning on putting on spandex anytime soon," I said. "Unless it's for something Leet's planning."

"You'll do it then?" he asked, surprised.

"If he'll have me," I said. "But nothing criminal. I've already got the Empire after me; the last thing I need is the Protectorate after me too."

It was said that Miss Militia could create a small nuke, although that might just be Protectorate propaganda. Still, between her and Armsmaster, someone who had the fighting skills to fight Endbringers, I doubted they'd have any trouble bringing us in.

All it would take would be Velocity with syringes of a sedative running around and dosing all the combatants. It was strange that I'd never heard of him doing something like that. Certainly a sedative would take time to work, and getting dosing right would be difficult, but it would make Cape fights really short.

It's what I would do. Hit people with the syringes from behind, remove them, and people might not even know they'd been hit.

That kind of speed would make fights a lot easier. I'd be able to finish them before they even started.

Instead I had the power to hit people hard. I'd have to find a way to leverage that into something better, something I could use to help people instead of just being the brute my category relegated me as. There might be some other things I could do with my Ki abilities; maybe make some kind of flash bang, or force shields or something.

Anything would be better than focusing on what I had done, and on what I was likely to have to do if the Empire came after me, or worse, Dad. I could expect what the ABB had done to me to be like child's play by comparison.

I had to get stronger fast, because right now I wasn't sure I'd be able to beat any of the Empire's capes; it wasn't as though they didn't have heavy hitters. Kaiser, Hookwolf, Purity... even Rune might be difficult depending on the strategies she used.

Even more important than getting strong, I was going to have to get tough and I was going to have to get faster and more accurate. I'd have to figure out strategies to use against some of them, and if this was really like a holodeck I might get my chance to practice against representations of each of them.

Of course, that depended on how good Leet's programming was. I wouldn't be able to entirely depend on my experiences here to figure out how they would react. Garrett kept telling me that real fights were unpredictable. That's why he kept insisting on real sparring instead of play acting.

The important thing was that I no longer had all the time in the world. The Empire was coming, and I had to be ready.


	16. Misdirection

Working a miracle, Garrett had convinced Leet to let me work with them. How he'd done it, I wasn't sure, because I'd expected Leet to go ballistic. I was a risk and a danger to them after all, and I wasn't sure what the upside to my helping them was.

Couldn't they just hire regular henchmen?

For whatever reason, he'd talked him into it, although there were a few caveats.

Leet gave me a holographic projector designed to create images of other people over myself. It had ten different preset images, and I was to use a different one each day on my way to the warehouse so that nobody could follow me.

He seemed to think that Shadow Stalker had followed me to the junkyard, even though I told him repeatedly that I'd been careful. He kept mumbling something about hacking the PRT.

Furthermore, I wasn't to even enter the block the warehouse was on if there was anyone else on the block. They needed people to believe that the warehouse was deserted and that there was nothing important there worth stealing.

Building weapons in preparation for whatever hell I delivered to them was keeping him occupied, however, so my first outing wouldn't be for a while, so my focus now had to be on training.

"When we built this place, I had Leet include the ability to simulate artificial gravity," Garrett said. "Including the ability to localize it from person to person."

I blinked. "That's... amazing."

"Right?" he said. He grinned. "It also means that I'm going to be able to train you in entirely new ways. I can put you under increased gravity, while I can move around cool as a cucumber. It'll make things harder for you, but that's the whole point."

"So I won't need my weighted clothes?"

We were up to three hundred pounds on those now; I had to be careful when I dropped them in gym class because they'd make a tell tale noise.

"No," he said. "We're keeping those."

"Right," I said slowly. "How much gravity are we talking about?"

"We're going to start out small," he said. "Likely triple."

"Triple?" I asked incredulously. "I can barely lift twelve hundred pounds!"

"And if you want to lift more you'll have to push yourself harder," he said. At my look, he shrugged his shoulders. "You'll potentially be going up against people like Hookwolf someday; if you aren't able to deal with a little gravity, you might as well lay down and die."

I scowled. I'd just been getting used to the training regime we'd been doing, and I'd been looking forward to finally moving that dump truck.

"Fine," I said.

He looked up, and said, "Computer, active the program Garrett One."

I staggered and fell to one knee as I felt it suddenly a little hard to breathe. Every motion felt slower, and it took me a moment to rise to my feet.

"I want you to give me a thousand push ups," he said.

"What?"

"We're going back to the basics. Stop if you have to, but I want a thousand push ups by the end of the day."

"And when I do those?"

"Sit ups, hand stands, then shadow boxing. Then we'll move on to sparring. Leet's got some programs he'd like to try on you."

All of that before I got to fight. I understood the necessity, but the fighting was what I was really interested in.

It took me three hours to do the push ups, and by the time I finished, my arms felt like noodles by my sides.

"We're skipping the rest of the exercises until tomorrow," Garrett said. "Instead I think we should do a little fighting."

I felt relieved; I'd been afraid I was taking so long we'd never get to it.

"Give me a minute," I said.

"Do you think that the bad guys will wait because you're tired?" Garrett taunted. "You have to learn how to fight through the pain."

A moment later the world shifted around us. We were in a darkened alleyway.

The one thing Leet had asked was that I not use my energy blasts, because those would blow up the walls of the building and destroy irreplaceable components.

I looked around. The ground was slick with rain, and the whole place was a little foggy.

There was a sound from above me, and I looked up in time to see something black and monstrous falling from the alley above. It took me a moment to realize that it was a man in a black cowl, his cape flowing around him like the wings of some kind of nocturnal creature.

A moment later the man was on me, punching and kicking me so quickly I could barely react. In normal gravity I'd have done a lot better, but in this gravity I was slow; too slow. His martial arts were a lot different from the ones Garrett had been showing me too, and I wondered who had been programming those into him.

A punch to the face reminded me to keep my thoughts on the battle at hand.

At this rate I'd be bruised all over my body again. The man hit like a jackhammer; he didn't seem human, even though the hero he was based on was supposed to have been a normal person like Garrett.

Maybe he had an exoskeleton. His costume included some kind of armor.

I managed to land a hit finally, and he flew across the alley to smash into a wall, but a moment later he was up and a moment later he was gone.

Panting for breath, I looked around. Where had he gone?

It was possible that he'd just dissipated, but I had a feeling that he was hiding somewhere, ready to ambush me the moment my back was turned.

A blow to the back of my head told me I was right.

I had to get faster, but at least with him I didn't have to worry like I had with Garrett. I could hit him without guilt or remorse.

Why Garrett had started me fighting a fictional hero I couldn't tell. Maybe because he was one of the only ones famous enough that I'd actually recognize.

After all, he'd hardly have me fighting Picard.

I snapped my hands backward, only to have them wrenched up behind my back. My arms still felt like spagetti noodles, but I was able to force my arm out, only to have him let go and vanish again.

He didn't have an ounce of Ki, which meant that I couldn't depend on that to help me. It was a valuable lesson; someone like Leet could attack me with robots and I'd have to deal with this too.

I gasped at a kick to the stomach. I fell to my knees gagging. I wanted to throw up.

Abruptly the man in the cape vanished, and Garrett appeased at the end of the alleyway.

"You can't just assume that people are going to fight fair, Taylor," he said. "People are going to use every advantage they have. They'll use surprise, misdirection, they'll even take hostages, anything they can to get the edge that'll keep them alive."

He walked toward me as I staggered to my feet. He was walking easily; the tripled gravity not affecting him any more than it had affected the dark cowled hero.

"Let's go over what you did wrong," he said. "I'll show you some moves that would have helped, and then we'll try it again."

It went like that for two more hours, over and over and over again. By the time Garrett was done, I felt worse than I'd felt on the day he's started dodging practice. My bones ached, and I felt like I'd been beaten repeatedly with socks full of pennies.

"The point is for you to do the moves until they are second nature," Garrett said. "Because in a real fight you won't have time to sit and think about what your next move is going to be."

"It didn't work very well against whoever the hell that was," I said resentfully.

"You'll never learn unless I have you fight people better than you are," Garrett said. "It could have been worse... I could have made you fight the Karate Kid."

"The guy who stands on one leg?" I asked. "How could that possibly be worse?"

"I meant from the com... never mind. The point is that the more you fight, the better you'll get. You'll be coming here every day to get your ass kicked, and if you stop getting your ass kicked, we'll either turn up the gravity, or get you someone stronger."

"Right," I said. "Fun times."

While I sounded sarcastic, part of me actually looked forward to it. Was there something to Dad's claim that our family was addicted to the rush of fighting?

"Go home," he said. "Eat, rest. I want you to practice your kicks a thousand times and your punches a thousand times before I see you next."

That would mean getting up early before school. Well, if that was what it took, I was willing.

I nodded, and I turned to head home. I checked my Ki, and when it seemed safe I slipped out of the door, switched my holographic device on and began my run for home.

The next week passed uneventfully.

Sophia continued to be gone, and Emma looked more and more haggard. I continued my training, and I actually began to get some hits in on the cowled man. Garrett had me spending more time actually fighting than exercising, reasoning that the increased gravity was probably enough exercise on its own.

I didn't hear anything about the Empire, although I did my best to listen in on conversations between the Empire kids. None of them seemed to know anything about what was happening at the upper levels though.

Dad seemed to convinced that my Ki abilities were going to be important; I wasn't sure that he just didn't want me to stay as far away from the fighting as possible, but I had to admit that I wanted to explore that aspect of my powers.

We couldn't explore those abilities at Leet's place, and doing it out in public would just draw unwanted attention to us. Even the boat graveyard was filled with homeless people who would be happy to sell us out to one of the gangs for a little money for a meal or for alcohol.

The best option would be underground, but even that would draw attention if we weren't careful.

Dad thought that using out powers to dig a tunnel would be good exercise, but he didn't want to do it at home for fear that the noise and vibration would alert someone to what we were doing.

I also suspected that he thought we'd bust a pipe somewhere, which would be money we didn't have out to repair.

So he spent extra time out looking for suitable spots while I trained. By Thursday he told me he'd found somewhere for us to train for the weekend.

In the meantime I enjoyed school without Sophia. Emma tried to bully me, but she was distracted by something, and her heart wasn't really in it. There were all sorts of rumors going around school about what had happened to Sophia, but nobody really seemed to know anything.

On Friday she returned.

I was halfway to school; running the three miles there barely made me sweat anymore and I was experimenting with more difficult routes. When I felt a familiar Ki signature a block ahead, my heart sank.

Turning and taking a different route would have been easy, but she'd just take whatever she wanted to school. At least here she wouldn't have Emma and her cronies to back her up. It wasn't like I had a whole lot to fear from Sophia physically.

What did she want?

She'd never bothered attacking me outside of school before, and even when she'd been following me she'd had numerous opportunities to ambush me. This was something different.

I suspected that I'd have to use my best dodging skills; Garrett still hadn't taught me how to not kill someone and it would be easy for me to break one of her bones even if I was trying to be easy.

I could see her a block ahead. She was leaning up against a fence, looking as though she'd been waiting for me for a while.

"Thought you'd gotten rid of me?" she said, smirking as I slowed down to a walk.

"Leave me alone," I said, walking past her. "We're not in school; don't you have something better to do?"

"You'd be surprised," she said wryly. "Life's a little different these days."

"Like I care," I said.

I walked past and froze as I felt her grab my arm. I stopped and turned to stare at her. She stared back, but a moment later she let her hand drop to her side.

"You've been training," she said. "Why don't you join the team?"

"What?"

"Cross country races are about three miles, and I've seen you do better than that every day," she said. "I know you've seen me following you."

"I don't know why you'd bother," I said. "I'm not doing anything weird or illegal."

"Sure about that?" she chuckled. "You know the Army only expects a nine minute mile out of a woman, running two miles. You beat that the other day, and then kept running. It almost seemed... superhuman."

I forced myself not to freeze, but from the look in her eyes I wasn't completely successful. There was a look in her eyes that I didn't like.

"What are you trying to say?" I asked.

"Nothing," she said. "Just wondering why you'd be training so hard if you weren't going out for the team."

Her smirk told me otherwise. She knew something. Had she seen me make one of my jumps when I was trying to escape her, or was she fishing, hoping to get something incriminating on me?

She'd be more than happy to claim I was a parahuman and that I'd attacked her, a normal person with my powers just to get me arrested. Even if I turned out to be innocent I'd have spent time in containment foam, stuck in the Rig. She'd claim it was all some kind of mistake.

"I'm learning martial arts," I said.

Sometimes the best lie was rooted in the truth. If I could get her attention off of my prowess as a runner maybe she'd leave me alone. It would also give me a little leeway if I should ever have to get into a physical confrontation; I could always claim that whatever happened was the result of training rather than parahuman strength.

"That how you got beat up?" she asked.

I shrugged. "I told you how I got beat up. It's not going to happen again though."

"Big talk from somebody too scared to stand up to Madison," she said, her voice mocking. "It's not like martial arts don't take years to learn."

"You've got to start somewhere," I muttered. I turned and started walking again.

While she might be right about the training, I had no doubt that I could kill her at this very moment without even meaning too. All the martial arts in the world wouldn't make up for the fact that if I kept fighting long enough I'd eventually land a hit and that would be the end of it.

"You'll always be two years behind me, you know," she said, following me again. "Which dojo are you studying at?"

I had an uneasy feeling that she knew more than she should, and that she was taunting me simply because she knew it made me uncomfortable.

"A friend of my Dad's is teaching me," I lied. "You think I could afford a real dojo?"

"I'd like to meet him sometime," she said casually. "Pick up a few pointers."

Was that why she was following me? Was she trying to get to Garrett? Why? Did she think he was ?abusing me, or did she have some other reason she was after him?

I'd had my suspicions she might be a parahuman, but I had no idea who she could possibly be. Was this an attempt to hurt him for some strange parahuman reason? Did she work for one of the gangs?

"That's not going to happen," I said flatly.

"Afraid I'll steal him from you?"

We both knew that wasn't what this was about. The problem was that I had no clue what she was fishing for. Either she knew that I had powers or she didn't. If she knew, then why was she needling me?

Everyone knew parahumans were dangerous. Even someone as seemingly innocuous as Parian could strangle you with your own clothes. Or at least that's what I would have done if I'd had her powers.

"Since when do you talk to me?" I asked, trying to sound impatient and irritable when in reality I was just puzzled. I felt like someone listening in to one side of a complicated conversation without a frame of reference to figure out what was going on.

Sometimes the best defense was a good offense. Get the conversation off of a touchy topic by deflecting it to something else.

"Since you proved you weren't entirely worthless," she said. "As a runner at least."

I stared at her, and she grinned at me, her teeth startlingly white. A moment later she was gone, slipping into the alley from which she'd come.

What the hell had just happened?


	17. Mercy

Breaking the lock to the door was easy; it just took a small exertion of strength. Even so, the door resisted as I tried to open it, the accumulation of dirt and rust on the other side proof of the fifteen years the place had been abandoned.

I could feel that the place wasn't inhabited before I'd ever opened the door. The entire block was actually empty, devoid of the usual homeless squatters looking for a place to come in out of the wind and the rain.

According to Dad, this place lay on the border of ABB and Empire territory. Gang fights were frequent here, enough so that the homeless had abandoned the area as being too dangerous.

There were rows of warehouses that butted up against each other with nowhere in between. It meant that there were really only two ways into the area; up and down the street. Because it was so easy to get trapped in the area the locals had learned to avoid it.

Even the gangs tended to avoid the area unless they were spoiling for a fight. It was considered territory too worthless for anyone to put the effort into holding. Sometimes the gangs even used this spot to have talks with each other; apparently these were tense affairs in which the threat of bloodshed was always present.

Sometimes that threat became a reality, and there was blood spilled . It had happened repeatedly over time, but it didn't happen that often, which was why Dad thought this was a good location.

It meant that no one was likely to be around to hear what we were doing, and that in turn was exactly what we needed. With our Ki senses we'd feel the gang members coming, and we could always hide if we had to.

Dad followed me inside, holding his hand out. A ball of energy crackled in his hand, small, but enough to illuminate the warehouse we were in. There were cobwebs everywhere, and I could feel insects skittering here and there.

I shuddered. I hated bugs.

He closed the door behind us, and he gestured for me to get my backpack. For once it didn't hold another set of weighted clothes. Instead it held several items, most prominently a camping lantern from when Dad and I had gone camping with Mom.

We'd replaced the batteries already, and I turned it on. It lit better than my Dad's Ki ball, and once I turned the light all the way up, I wished I hadn't.

There really were insects everywhere, and I could almost feel some crawling up the side of my leg.

There really wasn't much to this place. There were offices in the back with what had once been glass windows looking out onto the warehouse floor. They'd been stolen a long time ago, before the place had been locked up and forgotten. Now there was just cavernous blackness behind the open picture window frames and a door frame. The door itself had been stolen as well.

There were rickety stairs leading up to a loft; apparently it had once been used to store junk because some of it was still up there, shadows being cast by what looked like the remains of old furniture.

However, I'd taped my pants to my boots on my Dad's advice, not understanding why, and now I was very glad I had. I was wearing my black hoodie today; we weren't doing any combat training, and it would be too difficult changing out of my orange jumper if we really did have to deal with gang members.

"So what are we going to do?" I asked.

"Dig a hole," Dad said. "Then a tunnel. As far as I know there aren't any plumbing or wiring under this building, so we aren't likely to ruin anything people need."

"Where?" I asked.

"Let's start in the middle," Dad said.

I pointed at a spot, and he nodded. He stepped back and I pointed, gathering my energy. I blasted away, and my energy struck the concrete with a plunk. It gouged a small divot out of the floor, but there wasn't much of an effect.

Staring at it, I scowled. I'd hoped for more.

Dad stepped forward and blasted an area five feet from mine; his divot was a little larger than mine.

"Let's see who can get the farthest before we're exhausted," he said.

I stared at him for a moment, and then I turned. I began to blast away at the spot I'd hit before, blast after blast. Piece by piece I was cutting the concrete, creating a circle of destroyed material three feet wide.

Dad was keeping pace with me, although his circle may have been a little smaller. Still, he grinned at me and we both picked up the pace.

The thought of letting him win bothered something primal inside of me, and I found myself pushing harder and harder. I could try the Kamahameha, but I'd be spent afterwards, and that might give him the advantage.

Glancing at him, I saw him grin at me. It was the first time I'd seen him smile since Mom had died, and I could tell that he was enjoying the competition almost as much as I was.

I began to blast faster and faster, and he matched me. I doubted that he was as strong as me physically, but in Ki we were evenly matched. I was just beginning to learn how to use Ki, but he'd studied it when he was younger.

Was he holding back, trying to push me by letting me think that I had a chance? The thought irritated me in a deep way, and it made me push harder and harder.

By this point the air around us was getting hot, and we'd both chipped away four foot wide holes in the floor two feet deep. I wasn't going to be able to keep it up much longer, so I figured I might as well go for broke.

"KA...ME...HA...ME...HAAAA."

The ground around us rumbled, and I heard Dad shouting the same thing. A moment later there was a flash as both beams hit the floor, and the whole place began to rumble all around us.

If we'd done that from the beginning it would have been a lot more impressive, but we'd blasted with the dregs of energy we had left.

We'd reached the ground beneath the concrete at least, leaving two pits four feet wide and four feet deep. I coughed; the air was filled with concrete dust, and I idly wondered if that was healthy. It would be ironic if I did all this training only to die from silicosis or some other lung disease.

Slumping to the ground, I stared at Dad and he stared back. He chuckled, coughing a little, and I chuckled back.

It felt good sharing something with him; it had been a long time.

I felt as wrung out as though I'd run thirty miles in full weighted costume even though I hadn't done anything physically. Dad had assured me that it was as important to exercise my Ki as it was the rest of my body, and that it would get stronger with time.

"I think we're done here," Dad said.

It looked like the bugs had largely fled; if the fighting thing didn't pan out, maybe we could get a job as exterminators, frightening the bugs out of people's houses.

I coughed more, and I said "We should get out of here, and maybe bring masks next time."

He nodded, and a moment later we were both stumbling toward the exit.

I froze and turned toward Dad. He nodded; he'd felt it too.

There were large masses of Ki signatures coming from both directions. The fact that I could sense them at all meant that they were already less than two blocks away; the only reason I was sensing them at all from that distance was because there were so many of them.

We slipped outside and I blinked into the sunlight. The sun was setting, but after the darkness inside the warehouse I was blinded, although the fresh air felt good.

My eyes watered as I looked back and forth. The warehouses all up and down the block were all three stories tall, too tall for me to jump, and the routes in both directions were about to be blocked by the people who were coming.

"We could break into one of the other warehouses," I said. "One with better air."

Dad scowled. "It's already risky enough that we broke this door. They'll be sure to investigate if they find more than one."

Right. If this was a conference they'd be checking for ambushes. If it was something else they'd be looking for people fleeing. Either way, it was going to be difficult for us to hide.

"We go back in," Dad said. "And punch out way through the back wall."

"I don't have any Ki left," I said.

He looked at me as though I was stupid. I looked down at my fist.

Right. The walls of the warehouse were just thin metal and they'd be easy to punch through with my strength.

"What about the roof?" I asked. "They'll probably be watching the streets out back to make sure nobody has made a hole."

If they were as paranoid of ambush as we thought, they'd be sure to have watchers.

I was reasonably sure that I could make a three story drop without any problem, especially if I slipped off my weighted clothes. I could catch Dad too, if he needed it. If I regained my Ki I'd even be able to slow my fall.

The best option would be for us to hide on the roof until whatever was happening was over.

We stepped back into the warehouse, into the dust and the darkness. I was glad we hadn't turned the lantern off, but the dust in the air made it even dimmer than it had been before.

Grabbing the lantern, we headed up the stairs. For a moment I was afraid they wouldn't hold us and that I'd actually have to go through a wall, but we reached the loft.

It was even more disgusting than the bottom floor had been. There were still insects here.

I grabbed the remains of a large dresser and I lifted , carrying it toward the back wall. The floor under me groaned; with my clothes I weighed four hundred pounds and the dresser probably weighed two hundred more. Compressing that weight onto the area of two female feet probably wasn't something the floor beneath us had been designed for.

We headed toward the back wall, and Dad said "You'd better wrap your arm before you punch; the last thing you want to do is to cut yourself when you are going through."

I nodded and pulled my weighted hoodie off. While my entire outfit weighed three hundred pounds, the jacket itself weighed a hundred and fifty. I wasn't sure what it was made of. Dad helped me wrap my hand and forearm, and I heard the sounds of gunfire from behind us.

I could hear screams from outside the warehouse, people shooting at each other and dying.

The moment I could I punched upward. The metal bowed as I struck, and a moment later the entire panel came away from its fasteners. I scrabbled to grab it before it could slide to the ground, and I managed to catch hold of a protrusion.

I shoved it further up, and a moment later I was pulling myself up onto the roof. It didn't have much of a pitch, which was good because I wasn't sure how well Dad was with footing like this. Fortunately it had been dry for the past few days so the roof wasn't slippery.

I could feel small teams moving around the back alley, and I pulled Dad up easily. I switched the lantern off and dropped it carefully to the top of the dresser, and then I placed the metal sheet back where it had been.

It didn't fit as well as it had, and there would be gaps but it didn't look like it would slide off immediately and night had already fallen so the only thing be had to worry about was street lights, and there weren't any of those in a three block radius that worked. They had all been shot out by vandals, the gangs, or they'd had their lights stolen by tinkers or people selling to them.

"Next time lets go somewhere outside of town," I whispered to Dad.

He looked at me apologetically. It had been just bad luck that we'd picked the one time when the two groups were meeting.

Or had it?

Had the gangs left cameras in the area that wouldn't have been picked up by my Ki sense, but would have shown the both of us heading for this place? They'd have had to check to make sure we weren't setting something up for the next meeting, but it was possible that spotters on the other side had seen the first group moving in and had made their own assumptions.

Had we caused all of this?

Out of town was looking better and better.

The gunfire was sporadic, and I worked my way up to the ridge line of the roof. I peered over into the area below.

Flares had been thrown which illuminated the area in a hellish red light. Fog had risen while we'd been inside training, or maybe it had just been the smoke. On one end I could see at least thirty skinheads huddling behind a makeshift metal wall. That probably meant Kaiser was around.

On the other side I could see the Asians. Their group wasn't nearly as large, and they didn't have any capes with them that I could see. They were more heavily armed, and they'd found cover behind the burned out remains of wrecked cars parked on the street.

What the Asians didn't know, and what I could sense was that a second group was circling around behind them. My Ki sense couldn't differentiate between gang members, but I could tell from the way they were moving that they intended to flank the Asians and catch them in a crossfire.

Dad sidled up beside my and he gave me a grim look. He saw what was happening too and he didn't like it any better than what I did.

"What should we do?" I asked.

Ambushing someone like that intending to murder them bothered me on a fundamental level. I'd done the ambush thing at the restaurant, but that was different. They'd attacked me and I hadn't been strong enough to fight them head on.

This, though was cowardice.

"Taylor," Dad said slowly. "No."

"It'll be a slaughter," I said.

"We could just warn them," Dad said.

I shook my head. "It's too late. They'll never get out in time."

I began to slip out of my weighted clothing. I'd been wearing some variation of this practically since training had begun, taking them off only to shower and sleep.

The odds were good that I was going to hurt a lot of people in a minute, maybe more people than I would save, but what were my other options? If I let this ambush happen, then I was as much as responsible for it.

Dad scowled. "We'll hit them from behind."

I looked at him, surprised. After all his talk about not wanting to fight it surprised me that he was willing to join in. He probably saw it as being more about protecting me than anything else.

"They've got guns," he said. "It's not going to be pretty."

I remembered my lessons from the Bat. Hit from above, then hide. Attack from where you are least expected. Use intimidation and stealth.

Part of me wanted to charge in and attack them from the front; that would have been a lot more satisfying. But given their weapons and the numbers this was the best that we were going to be able to do.

Dad slipped me his own dark hoodie and he wrapped his face with a handkerchief. He handed me one as well, and I covered my face with it. The thought that wee could have used it in the warehouse occurred to me; it would have helped with all the gravel dust.

Still, that would have left us trapped inside a place with no way out. We'd have been sitting ducks. Now we were the predators, although for how long I couldn't be sure.

A moment later we were moving across the rooftops. I felt like I could fly, even without any Ki. I hadn't realized how much the weights had been dragging me down. Leaping from rooftop to rooftop was easy now, and my Dad was following behind me.

We reached the end of the line.

The gang was gathered underneath us, peering cautiously around the corner at the battle going on in the distance.

From their body language I could tell that they were primed to go; it was the combination of fear and excitement that you'd expect.

It was three stories to the ground, a larger jump than I had ever made in the past.

Part of me wanted to simply wait and leave. What did I owe the Asians anyway? They'd already tried to murder me once, beating me for no reason other than the fact that I was there. By all rights I should be cheering the Nazis on. Why play the hero? Why not play it safe?

The larger part of me wanted this.

I kept seeing the face of that girl, the one I'd tried to save. They'd assaulted her for no more reason than I'd been assaulted, and then they'd murdered her just to make a point.

Neither side deserved any mercy, and if I wasn't really able to control myself yet, maybe that wasn't such a bad thing.

I stepped out into space, and a moment later I was in free fall.


	18. Grounded

My fall seemed to last forever.

I'd been practicing in increased gravity for several hours a day for more than a week, and on of the unexpected things had been that I had to have increased gravity. Any slip would result in falling faster than normal, and reflexes had to be faster.

Falling at three gravities would be fatal for most people. Even for me it had been painful and I'd had to get faster even as I was being attacked over and over and over again.

Now, weighing only a hundred pounds I felt as light as a feather. I dropped behind the last of the gang members. He began to turn at the sound of my feet hitting the pavement and I kicked. I felt the bone in this thigh shattering, and he fell, screaming.

Away from the flares that had been lit almost a block away it was dark enough that everyone appeared to be silhouettes. That hadn't been a problem for this group because they hadn't really needed to see themselves; the Asians were lit up which was all they needed.

That was going to be an advantage because we could sense Ki and they couldn't.

Beside me, Dad was a dark figure who grabbed the next thug, a hulking bald man and he tossed him into the men in front of him, causing five of them to fall down.

Normally it was a mistake to get into the middle of a group of opponents; it meant that all of them would get a shot at you. According to Garrett it was important to make sure that you avoided a situation like that at all costs unless you were superhumanly fast or tough enough to take anything they could give you.

But it was dark enough now that none of them could really be sure of who they were hitting. There weren't any street lights and the distant lights from the city were barely enough to illuminate anyone.

It felt like they were moving in slow motion as I lunged forward. I smashed a man in the ribs, feeling them breaking under my hands; a second man's knee shattered under my feet.

The people at the front were just becoming aware that something was wrong and they were turning around, but I saw three of them fall as they were shot from the back; they'd been noticed by the Asians.

No matter what happened here there wouldn't be any innocents they could torture to use against me.

A man fired a gun off near my face; I dodged to the left in time to avoid being shot but my ears range with the sound. Others were struggling to bring their guns to bear, but Dad and I were in the middle of their men, which meant they couldn't fire.

Several of them ran across the gap, dodging fire from the Asians. I could see their plan; they'd wait for us to finish dropping their fellows and then they'd open fire on the two of us unobstructed. It was a cold calculation they were making; the assumption that their men wouldn't be the last ones standing, but they'd see a man being thrown so they were probably assuming capes.

We were only dark silhouettes, but if they sprayed their guns in our direction the odds were good that they'd hit us at least a few times.

I doubted that trying to use someone as a human shield would help; bullets passed through the human body easily and these didn't seem like people who were sentimental.

Dad saw the problem too. He was careful to keep his opponents between him and the gunmen, and he was doing a lot better than I would have thought. Had he been lying about the extent of his involvement with Mom and Lu strum?

These thugs weren't trained very well; even with my own limited training I could tell that. They got in each others way and generally seemed panicked.

The five who were on the other side seemed to be more disciplined, which probably meant they were better shots. I could hear one of them screaming into his phone, probably calling for backup.

I ducked as a bullet whizzed by my ear. Our opponents were thinning out, which meant our cover was disappearing as well.

They were starting to fire at us now, and I lunged to the side as bullets filled the air of the space where I had been. One man jerked as he was struck with bullets.

Apparently they weren't willing to shoot a lot of their own men, but individuals were all right.

I rolled, grabbing a man's arm and feeling bones crunching in his wrist as a shoved his arm up and toward the men across from us. He involuntarily pulled the trigger as he screamed in pain, and I saw them duck down.

The Guinness World record for throwing a human being by a non-para human was something like fifteen feet. The distance between us and the five men on the other side of the street was at least forty five feet.

I grabbed the man I was holding by the belt and I threw him across the divide. His body was riddled by bullets and while he obscured their vision of us Dad and I leaped around the corner.

Jumping straight up at this weight wouldn't be that hard for me, but I suspected it would be harder for Dad. I made my hands into a cradle and gestured. A moment later he was jumping toward me and I was throwing him into the air.

I felt something stinging on my calf as I flew into the air with my own leap. Had I been shot by one of the remaining men?

It was hard to tell and I'd heard of ordinary people not knowing they'd been shot until after the battle. As long as it didn't slow me down or do anything to permanently injury me it didn't matter.

Gesturing at Dad, I indicated what I wanted to do. He shook his head at first but once he realized I was determined he scowled and agreed.

We were too high for them to reach without going out into the darkness. As it was, we would be difficult to see against the dark metal roofs.

It didn't matter.

I ran up to the ridge line, crouching until I could see the men down below. They were only silhouettes against the backdrop of the city lights, but it didn't matter. I could see them quite easily with my Ki senses.

They'd moved across the divide to come at us around the corner. The fact that we'd fled meant we weren't bulletproof, which gave them hope that they could shoot us in the back.

Dropping down behind them I punched a man under his arm. I heard and felt the bone crack, leaving his arm hanging uselessly.

Dad was already kicking a man in the stomach. He flew against a wall and slid to the ground, apparently too stunned or unconscious to do anything to retaliate against us.

The last three men weren't any problem at all; by this time it was clear that they were no match for us even if they were better shots; they were just too slow.

The other group was withdrawing from the Asians; apparently they were planning to come around and try to ambush us.

To our right was the backs of the warehouses; to the right was a large expanse of undeveloped land. It had originally been intended to be developed into more warehouse space or for other industrial use, but when the economy had collapsed it had been left to grow fallow, leaving grass as high as my waist. It was undoubtedly filled with snakes and other vermin, but at the moment that was the least of my worries.

It didn't matter, because Dad and I were already sprinting through the fields in the darkness. If they had more flares it might be bad for us, so we were moving as quickly as we could.

I'd left my weighted clothing on top of the roof; hopefully they wouldn't find it and I'd be able to get them back, but there wasn't any guarantee.

Vehicles were coming in from the distance; it was possible that it was the Empire's reinforcements, although part of me hoped it was the PRT.

Suddenly the sky above us was filled with light, lit by a flare. Dad grabbed me and pulled me down into the tall grass. We huddled there together for a moment.

"They'll catch up if we hide," I hissed. "They won't be able to hit us from this distance."

"How many flares do you think they have?" he asked. "They aren't the PRT. My bet is that they used up whatever flares that they had with the Asians."

"Or they held them back because they didn't want to bring attention," I said.

I could see a group of them making their way toward us only to stop as they were fired at from behind. The ABB were apparently taking advantage of the situation now that they were the ones with cover, and this led the Empire to be the ones exposed.

"Now!" Dad said.

We exploded out of the tall grass. I was glad I'd done all of the running, because now the ground seemed to blur under my feet as I left Dad behind until we reached the streets in the distance. This was a residential area that had a lot of abandoned houses, at least looking at the overgrown yards

It didn't matter; I raced for the nearest fence and jumped it. Dad followed me, his chest heaving. It was clear that he needed to do a little more running; just weight lifting wasn't going to give the kind of endurance you needed in these situations.

I could run for literally hours, and now that we were in the maze of a residential area they'd never catch us.

Just to make sure we moved through three different streets, passing through alleyways and over fences until we felt we were safe.

Dad hadn't parked the car anywhere close to the place we were training; the neighborhood had been bad enough that he hadn't wanted to risk it. Also, the area didn't have any cars and leaving one might have aroused some suspicions.

I'd left my backpack too, but we pulled our handkerchiefs and hoodies off and wrapped them around our waists.

We walked two more blocks until we reached the abandoned house Dad had left the car at. With a quick check for Ki signatures, I reached down and pulled the garage door open, and a moment later Dad was inside pulling the car out.

I'd broken the garage door when I'd initially opened it, but I didn't feel bad. The place had already been stripped of wiring anyway. It had been gutted to the extent that it would probably be easier to start all over than to refurbish the place.

I yanked the garage door down as Dad passed through, and a moment later I was inside the car.

"And you wanted to park closer," he said. He sounded amused.

That hardly seemed appropriate when we'd just been through a life and death battle; even if I'd been the one who had initiated it instead of running away.

I stared at him coldly. "I wanted to go someplace out of town, not gang central."

He shrugged. "Well, you wanted some training. And you didn't kill anyone this time anyway."

The world seemed to contract around me and it suddenly felt hard to breathe. I could feel the blood run from my face as I turned to stare at him. "What?"

"Did you think I wouldn't know?" he asked. "How many tall, super strong dark haired teenage girls are out running on the route leading out to the junkyard?"

"Garrett told you?"

"The Empire has been making sure everybody knows," Dad said. "The guys at the Docks have been talking about it."

We were pulling down the street slowly. The last thing we wanted was to look like we were running, and so he was being careful to make it look like we belonged here. He even had a story in case we were stopped by gang members or by police.

I stared at him, stricken. Telling him had been the last thing that I wanted, even more than telling Garrett. At least with Garrett all I would be losing was training. That was important, but I could find other people to train me.

But if I lost Dad so soon after losing Mom, that would be unthinkable.

"I'm disappointed that you didn't tell me," he said. "I've been waiting."

I stared at my hands. "I couldn't."

"Was it at least an accident?"

"He was going to shoot me," I said. "I threw a gun at him; it didn't end well."

He was silent for a long moment. "I'm sorry you went through that. There's a reason I didn't want you getting into fights before you were ready, and it wasn't just that I was worried that you'd get shot."

I frowned. There was something I should remember, but it was escaping me now.

"So are you going to yell at me about all of this?"

He shook his head. "As far as I could tell, nobody died, which means you're being a lot more careful. That's a good thing. You should never kill someone unless you intend to."

I noticed that he didn't flatly say to never kill someone. Had he killed someone in the past? Had Lustrum sent people to retrieve Mom when she'd defected?

"I tried not to hit them in the head," I said. "Or the torso that much."

"Even a broken leg can kill, Kiddo," he said warningly. "And it's possible that some of those men back there won't last the night, even if they were alive when we left them."

Some of them had certainly been killed by their own men. I couldn't feel guilty about that.

"My question is how you are going to feel about that?" he asked. "Knowing that because you decided to save some people, other people may die."

"The Asians would have died," I said.

"I thought they were the ones who beat you?" he asked. "Why care about them at all?"

"It wasn't them," I said. "And even if it was, the Empire is just as bad. Did you see what they did to that poor girl because I saved her?"

"You'll find that happening more often than you'd expect. How do you think the gangs stay in power?"

"What?"

"Kill or torture a few witnesses and cases dry up. The PRT is large enough to make them pay for that kind of interference, but independent heroes aren't."

"Is that why you didn't join the PRT?" I asked. "You could have been a hero."

"I saw what that life was all about when I was with your mother," he said. "Being a Caper is a dirty life no matter which side of the law you are on. It soils you."

"So what," I asked. "We give us?"

"We try to make a difference in ways the gangs don't expect," Dad said. "Build this city instead of tearing it down."

"And how has that been working out for you?" I asked.

"Have you asked yourself what the city would be like if I and people like me hadn't been there working behind the scenes?" he asked. "The city is half dead, but without us it would end up as a ghost town."

"Maybe it should," I said. I scowled. "Is it worth it? You could make twice the money someplace else, and do work you're proud of."

"This is the city I met your mother in," Dad said softly. He stared at the road. "Where we had our first date, our first kiss. The whole city is heavy with memories, and she loved this place."

"She liked the beach," I admitted. "Probably because she'd never grown up close to one."

"It was important to her, having that connection," he said. "Being able to smell the sea, to feel the water. She liked the people too, so different from where she grew up."

"Still," I said, hesitatingly. "She's gone."

"Not to me she's not," he said. He was silent for a moment. "She knew what I am... what we are, and it never made a difference to her."

"She did?"

"I had to tell her," Dad said, "Before the whole thing with the tail came up. I couldn't risk her wanting you to keep it."

"Isn't ten times as strong as a baby still not that strong?"

"You weren't going to stay a baby," Dad said.

I suppose if they'd waited it would have been like a boy being circumcised at twelve. Who wants to remember something like that?

The conversation trailed off as we headed for the house. I could see PRT vans racing back in the direction we'd come; apparently they'd finally noticed the combat and were going to pick up the pieces.

I wondered if they were planning to wait until as many gang members killed each other off before they came in to take care of things.

It would be a cold and calculating way to deal with the situation but they seemed like cold and calculating people.

As we pulled into the driveway, Dad finally spoke again.

"Oh, and by the way, you're grounded."

"What?" I asked.

"Next time you kill someone I really need you to tell me," he said. "You aren't being grounded for the killing... you are being grounded for not being honest."

I closed my eyes and tried to calm myself. What could he even ground me from? I didn't have any friends, and I barely had any hobbies.

Still, part of me felt like he was being unfair even as another, larger part thought that being grounded meant I was literally getting away with murder.

Sometimes being a teenager sucked.


	19. Interlude Sophia 2

"They say she moved so fast it almost seemed like there were two of her," Velocity said. "The ones that would talk at least."

"Do you still think this was a normal martial artist?" Armsmaster asked.

Sophia stared at the carnage around her. Several men were dead, although at the moment it was unclear whether they'd been shot by their own men or by the ABB.

"Considering that she threw a man forty five feet, I'd say it was unlikely," Velocity said.

"So these guys are willing to talk to you all?" Sophia asked incredulously. "I thought the gangs were all about keeping quiet... snitches get stitches and all of that."

"They each say they were innocently passing through the neighborhood when the other group attacked them for no reason," Velocity said. He smirked. "They're happy to throw the other gangs under the bus, and the same thing for this new martial artist."

"Anybody get a description?" Battery asked.

Apparently the gang members were done being loaded into PRT vans and ambulances as needed.

"A girl in a hoodie," Velocity said. "Anybody want to bet that it was the same girl who threw a gun so hard she crushed that guy's skull?"

"Hookwolf's nephew?" Battery asked.

Sophia had heard about that; a nice reward to anyone who turned in the girl who'd killed a Nazi. As far as she was concerned the girl deserved a medal.

"There was a girl in a hoodie they were talking about in that attack on the restaurant a couple of weeks ago," Battery said. "Took down three Nazis with martial arts, saved the owners."

"A new Cape then," Velocity said. "Not with any of the gangs, either, unless it's maybe the merchants."

She'd attacked the Empire, and whites couldn't join the ABB. She sounded a little too active to be with the merchants to Sophia, not that she planned on contributing anything.

After all, the only reason she was here because they'd forced her to be. They'd neutered her, forcing her to use stupid tranquilier darts and wander around in places where the gangs didn't even go. She was more of a show pony than anything; proof to the rich people that the Protectorate was going to protect their fancy shops and businesses.

The Protectorate was a toothless organization as far as Sophia was concerned. She resented every moment that she wasn't out kicking ass and taking names, and she knew that she'd never be able to do that while working for these people.

This mystery cape had done more in ten minutes than most of the Protectorate sitting in their ivory towers had in a month.

"So a brute," Armsmaster said, "But not bulletproof."

"Or she'd have just stood there and let her shoot her?" Sophia asked, trying unsuccessfully to hide her contempt.

"It's unusual for Brutes not to have some kind of protection, from bullets at least," Battery said. "Are we sure they aren't Tinkers with some kind of weird bioaugmentation or something?"

"It would explain why there are two of them," Armsmaster said. "If we are facing someone able to augment others, that's concerning."

The gangs loved tinkers. A tinker able to make something, a drug say, that gave people superpowers? They'd stop at nothing to get their hands on them.

Armsmaster squatted down. Apparently he had a program that was able to make some sense of tracks, assuming that any could be seen.

"I think there actually were two assailants working together," Armsmaster said. "I've got two sets of tracks, one smaller, probably in the one hundred to hundred twenty pound range from the depth of the depressions and the other at least a hundred pounds heavier."

"Two brutes working together?" Battery asked. "Isn't that something we would have heard about before?"

"Not if it was a recent teamup," Velocity said. "The unusual part is two brutes we haven't heard of before."

"Maybe it's somebody you've heard of before wearing a hoodie," Sophia said, smirking.

"If all three incidents are to be believed, this is a female brute in her early teens with martial arts skills, possibly mover skills..."

"Mover?" Sophia asked.

"According to the Empire both of them jumped back up onto the roof after they went around the side."

Sophia looked up at the warehouses. Three stories tall they'd have been difficult for her to reach even in her shadow state.

"Tracks confirm that hypothesis," Armsmaster said.

Aegis landed, holding a familiar looking black hoodie. Sophia had seen that hoodie before, somewhere. It took her a moment to identify it.

Hebert.

She felt a chill go up her spine. Hebert had killed someone, and by all reports it had been an accident.

She'd done better this time, but she'd deliberately thrown people to be shot at, and the injuries some of these men had would be with them for the rest of their lives, barring intervention by Panacea or another healing cape.

There were shattered knees, broken legs, arms that had been pulled out of their sockets. It had been like they were being fought by someone who didn't know their own stregth.

"I found this on the roof," Aegis said. "It's heavy as hell, and I can't figure out why."

"How heavy?" Armsmaster asked, looking up with interest.

"At least two hundred fifty, three hundred pounds. I had to buff up with adrenaline even to get it down here. There's no way I'd be able to wear this long term."

Hebert wore one and ran with one in her backpack. Why?

Did Brutes even train?

Sophia had seen Aegis practice fighting, but she'd never seen him lifting weights. From what she'd heard it was the same with other Brutes.

Yet Hebert was lifting weights all the time. She was wearing six hundred pounds and running miles. Why would she do something like that?

"Why would someone wear something like this?" Sophia asked.

"Armor?" Armsmaster asked.

Aegis had set it on the back of a PRT van, which had visibly dipped.

Armsmaster did some preliminary tests while everyone else stood around looking uncomfortable. He didn't seem to notice, being so engrossed in what he was doing.

Finally he shook his head. "I'll have to run further tests back at the Rig, but it seems like the only thing the inserts in this outfit do is weigh a lot. This outfit wouldn't stop a punch or a bullet."

"So she's up on the roof and she ditches the hoodie before she drops down to fight. Why?" Velocity asked.

"There was a roof tile loose on the warehouse I found this on," Aegis said. "It looked like someone came from below."

"What was she doing there?" Battery asked. "Waiting to ambush the gangs?"

Sophia was interested in that herself. She hadn't seen Hebert do anything but train obsessively day after day. Was she making her move now, and if so why?

The second Cape was obviously her father. Had they been training here because they'd found out the junkyard was compromised?

Sophia hadn't had time to follow Hebert recently because all of her spare time was spent training, and not the good kind. There were rules about everything and she had to memorize them all, and prove that she knew them all.

It wasn't just criminal rights, like Sophia had expected. There were rules about how to handle evidence, about dealing with the public, even rules about what would likely lead to getting sued.

As far as Sophia was concerned, not being sued was easy when nobody knew who you were, but that ship had apparently sailed.

Maybe she should run around in a hoodie.

It was the laziest costume ever, as far as Sophia was concerned. At least her prison outfit had character. It would be a funny statement, a hero dressed like someone from the pen.

They were all walking now to the warehouse in question.

"The lock has been broken," Armsmaster said unnecessarily. They could all see where PRT investigators had left printed card when they'd photographed the scene.

Crime scene management was one of the top things they were forcing Sophia to learn, along with the fact that she wasn't allowed to just beat suspects until they cried.

That was half the fun of being a vigilante!

Armsmaster cautiously nudged the door open. He made a movement at his belt and a moment later four small drones flew out into the room. They had lights on them, and cameras and were probably controlled by twitches of his ass or something.

Armsmaster was weird.

There were two holes in the concrete, four feet wide each. The air still had the scent of dust and mold.

No tracks were obvious; the floor was concrete, and apparently the dust had been blown around by something.

"There's not enough evidence for the program to read," Armsmaster said. "Move in and clear the area."

There was a chance that one or more of the gang members were hiding in here, probably up in that loft. Sophia grinned. If there was she might get a chance to do something instead of just this glorified cleanup duty.

Before she could move, though, Velocity was already up the stairs.

"Clear!" he said.

Sophia gritted her teeth and cautiously moved toward one of the gutted offices in the back. With the light from the drones it was soon apparent that there wasn't anything of value back there.

"Clear," she said, only to have Battery speak the same thing at the same time.

She looked at the older woman who smiled.

"Were they trying to dig something up?" Velocity asked, already back downstairs.

They all stared at the holes, as though there were answers to be had there.

"I'll have to use a scanner to see," Armsmaster said, suddenly looking more cheerful.

There were scanners that the police used to look for bodies; Sophia knew that from watching cop shows. She had no doubt that Armsmaster was going to whip something up just to be fancy though.

She doubted that they'd find anything. After all, Hebert and her father had been blowing up cars out in the junkyard. Most likely this was more of that.

It pleased her a little to know something they didn't. If they spent tens of thousands of dollars and valuable time chasing their tails because she withheld information, that was even better.

Giving them the finger had been the one thing she'd wanted to do more than anything, and this was that in spades.

Besides, what was the upside to telling them?

They'd blackmail Hebert into working with them, same as they had her, and then she'd have to work side by side with Hebert. They might even make her a full Ward, which would make Hebert her superior.

Screw that.

It was hard enough to accept that Missy girl; she still played with toy ponies when she thought no one was looking, no matter how tough she liked to pretend to be. The fact that she'd lucked out in the power department didn't help.

"Maybe they were looking for buried treasure," Velocity was saying.

Sophia was careful to keep her amusement off her face. With any luck it would drive them crazy trying to speculate.

"Were they angry about something?" Battery asked.

"That's not consistent with their power level displayed outside," Armsmaster said. "And if the crater had been made by human fists the dispersal pattern would have been different."

"My drones aren't showing anything else unusual," Armsmaster said.

He seemed proud of the drones, which made Sophia want to do something to sabotage them. She vowed to "accidentally" destroy one the next time they were used.

As the others stared at the ground and speculated, Sophia grimaced.

Hebert was going to be a problem. She'd already killed someone, and while the first time was hard, it got easier with time.

Worse, she'd done it accidentally.

That meant that it would be very easy for her to snap the next time Emma said something vicious. She'd be able to kill Emma before Sophia could do anything to save her.

Telling Emma was out of the question too. Emma and Hebert were long past the point where they could be friends again, and Sophia knew there was no way Emma would be able to keep the secret.

She'd try to use it to get Hebert thrown in jail, or she'd tell the Empire kids, knowing they'd tell her bosses. If she did that, Sophia would be forced to go to her own bosses.

After all, it was one thing pushing a girl around, or even watching her get beat up a little because she was too weak to defend herself.

Letting her get murdered by those Empire idiots was another thing entirely. For one thing, the Empire was worse than Hebert had ever considered being. Hebert was weak, or at least she had been, but she wasn't a racist.

She didn't hate Sophia for something that she couldn't even control, and she wasn't a threat to Sophia's family either.

Every day there was a chance that Sophia was going to get a call and hear that her mom had been killed, or her stepdad or her siblings. Maybe it would be the pastor in her church, or one of her old friends from school.

It was going to happen sooner or later, and the only thing Sophia could do about it was to kill or maim or at least lock up as many of the idiots as she could.

If Hebert was killing Nazis, even if only accidentally, Sophia wasn't going to stand in her way.

Emma would just have to risk it.

Getting her to pull back without explaining it to her would be almost impossible, too. The best Sophia would be able to do was to not back her up. Any piece of information she gave Emma would be used against Hebert, and that would only make Hebert more likely to snap and kill them all.

Well, kill Emma and Madison.

Sophia had no doubt that she'd be able to get away from Hebert if she went ape. After all, her powers were particularly well suited for surviving a crazed Brute.

Better yet, she had backup now, and while Hebert might be scary on an individual level, Armsmaster had fought Leviathan.

Miss Militia could generate nukes if she needed to, and Vista could lock them in until they couldn't escape.

Velocity could run at them fast and punch at them with the force of a muscular baby... not all of the Protectorate were power houses, but the ones who were were particularly deadly.

There were rumors they were working on getting some other members into the group, too... some kid tinker, and a guy who could stop time or something.

Powers like that made Sophia wonder what she'd done to get the short end of the stick when it came to powers. With the power to stop time she could have become rich. With Tinker powers she could have built drones that would blast bad guys while she sat at home drinking tab and watching some stupid anime program.

Sophia frowned.

That wouldn't have been fun at all. Maybe she was better off the way she was. This way she got all the fun of feeling people's faces giving way under her fists and feet, and she got to see the look in their eyes when they realized that they'd been beaten by a girl. Even if they didn't know she was black it didn't matter.

Watching the Empire guys egos come crashing down was a real rush.

In any case, if Hebert made a move against Sophia, it would be easy to turn the Protectorate against her, and it would be easy for her to have an "accident" in the middle of combat. After all, if Hebert wasn't bulletproof she wasn't crossbow proof either.

Still, that whole scenario might end up with Hebert in the Wards and Emma dead. It might be better to get Hebert on her side, even though Sophia had no idea of how to do that.

Maybe she could drop some hints about some of the Empire safehouses she knew about?

If Hebert wanted to be a hero, she'd need information, and information was one of the things Sophia had a lot of. She'd been tracking the Empire for years, and she knew their crack dens, dog fighting rings and other locations as well as anyone.

Not that she'd shared that information with the Protectorate or the PRT. For one thing, they thought she was a stupid kid, ignoring the fact that she'd been on her own and successful for more than a year.

For another, screw them.

Maybe she could aim Hebert in the direction of the Empire and kill two birds with one stone. She'd get Hebert in her pocket and she'd be able to take down Empire locations that she hadn't been able to take down on her own.

Even if she didn't get to do the punching herself she'd still be sticking it to the Empire. Having Hebert owe her one wouldn't hurt either.

The only question was how to get the information to Hebert without revealing that Sophia herself was a cape. Hebert seemed a little dense about the whole thing, and that wasn't the kind of information that she really wanted her to have anyway.

Maybe she could approach her in her other identity. Shadow Stalker was a Ward now, a hero, and Hebert was probably a sucker for heroes.

Sophia suddenly felt much better about her options, and she allowed herself to relax and enjoy herself as the older members of the Protectorate chased their own heels.

It wasn't much, as vengeance went, but it was a start.


	20. Tactics

"It's not always going to be that easy," Garrett said.

"It wasn't," I said. "Well, the fighting was, but the not getting shot was a lot harder."

I had a massive bruise on my right calf to remind me that it could have gone a lot differently. Apparently I was now somewhat bullet resistant, even though it still hurt.

I'd showed the bruise to Garrett and he hadn't looked particularly sympathetic.

"You got shot once," he said. "But I'm guessing that your Dad is less bulletproof than you are. I'm surprised that he was able to keep up, frankly."

We hadn't exactly told him that Dad was a Cape, or why we had been there. He looked like he knew I was hiding things, but he didn't seem to care.

"Also, you got lucky," he said. "If the bullet did that much damage to your skin, getting shot in the eye or the mouth probably wouldn't be good for you."

I winced. I could have easily lost an eye, and Dad could have died, or at least been horribly injured. Running would have been the sensible thing to do, but it had gone against everything that was in me.

"Did you think about other options?" he asked. "That didn't involve your father possibly getting shot?"

I frowned. "They were pinned in and it was about to be a bloodbath."

"You couldn't have ripped roofing tiles off and thrown them at them?" he asked. "With cover, they wouldn't have been able to hit you."

I winced. "I haven't had much success in throwing things at people."

Considering that the last time I'd thrown something at someone they'd died, I was probably going to be gun shy about that for a while. I was really having trouble understanding how Cape fights didn't have a much larger casualty rate considering how even small differences in strength could result in someone dead.

"We haven't talked much about tactics. Maybe it's time we should."

"Tactics?"

"I like to call tactics how to not get killed 101. It's about how to use force and when to use force to get what you want."

"All right," I said slowly.

We were sitting on a couch in the residential portion of Garrett and Leet's lair.

"When you get into a fight there are three possibilities," he said. "Either you are stronger than them, they are stronger than you, or you are evenly matched."

That made sense. I nodded.

"The group you just fought were weaker than you, but they could still hurt you. What do you think you should do against a group like that?"

I shrugged nervously. I wasn't sure what he wanted me to say.

"The first thing you can do is scare them," he said. "It doesn't have to be spooky. Maybe it's just a display of power. People who are nervous make mistakes... either they make foolish attacks or they run away. Either one is to your benefit."

"Is that why the Empire keeps people like Hookwolf?" I asked.

Garrett nodded. "The best fight is the fight you don't have to have. If people are too scared to fight you then you've won."

"Not everybody is going to be intimidated by a teenage girl," I said.

"Then attack them fast," he said. "Odds are they've got friends they are waiting for, and sometimes those are friends you don't want to meet. Hit them before they are ready. That's one of the things you did right."

I'd seen enough fights in school to know that there was a lot of posturing before fights. I had a suspicion that it was the same way with Cape fights. In nature that was called a threat display, something animals used to get other animals to back down.

Cutting through all of that only made sense.

"You'll probably be fighting groups," he said. "Pick the strongest one and separate him from the others. Then pick off the lieutenants one by one. Divide and conquer and don't fight the battle that you want them to fight."

I hadn't really known who the leaders were in the fight last night; maybe if I'd watched a little longer I might have. It had been too dark and chaotic to pick them out.

Still, if I ever got a chance it made sense to pick them off one by one.

"If you get to the point where some of them can't even hurt you, ignore them. They're a waste of your time. Focus on the biggest threat first and work your way down," Garrett said.

Bullets still hurt, and I suspected that showing my bruise to Garrett had been a mistake. I suspected that my training sessions from now on would involve me getting shot... a lot.

"The biggest thing is not to underestimate them," Garrett said. "Sometimes if it seems too easy it's because it's a trap."

"What if they are stronger than me?" I asked.

At this point I was probably a match for some capes, but against people like Kaiser or Hookwolf I'd be mincemeat.

"Get as much information as you can," Garrett said. "Feel them out. A lot of the strong guys love to hear themselves talk. If they jump straight to it they might not think they are as tough as you do."

"Pick the location," he continued. "And use the environment against him. If you meet Crawler, dropping a building on him will at least give you time to get away."

I doubted that I was going to be dropping buildings on anybody soon, although I might be able to drop bricks on their head. I'd have to reserve judgment until we tried some scenarios.

"Get them to underestimate you," Garrett said. "And run away if you have to. Better yet, get some friends if they are stronger than you. Fighting them one on one is a good way to get yourself killed."

I had no intention of fighting Hookwolf or Lung one one one, even if part of me fantasized about being strong enough to do so.

Still, did I really have anyone on my side who could help against the Empire or the ABB?

Dad was at best my equal in strength, and likely weaker. Garrett was skilled, but ultimately a normal person. Leet was... Leet.

Maybe I should try to make some Cape friends now that I had enough power to really qualify. Glory girl would be perfect, since she was strong enough to spar with. Panacea would be even better; with her help I could get strong really fast.

After all, my lack of healing abilities was the only thing keeping me from being a non-freakish Crawler.

I wasn't really ready to come out to the PRT, though, especially since they might have decided that I was responsible for that murder. There were rumors that gangs had people inside the PRT, which meant that if they got my identity Hookwolf would come after me and Dad.

Did the PRT make you give them your identity when you registered? I wasn't really sure.

"Don't waste your energy on an all out attack unless it's a sure thing," he said.

I'd finally shown him my Kamehameha, and he'd been doubtful that anyone would sit still long enough to be hit by it. He'd suggested seeing if I could gather my energy quietly beforehand and then performing it faster, which might make it more applicable in a real fight.

"That thing you do," he said. "Tires you out, leaves you weak. It didn't matter against those guys because you were weaker. But if you were fighting someone stronger..."

Ironically, the only people I'd really use it against would be someone stronger. What he was saying was that if I used it I'd better hit with it or it wouldn't be worthwhile.

"Also, if he's a blaster, get in close," Garrett said. "Most blasters tend to be squishy, which means you can end the fight with one or two punches."

He was silent for a moment.

"What if I'm not sure?" I asked. "If maybe we're pretty closely matched."

"Keep the pressure on," Garrett said. "Stay in his face. Don't give him a chance to catch his breath. People tend to make mistakes when they don;t have time to think. That's why salesman talk about limited time offers."

"All right," I said cautiously.

"Using terrain is just as important with an equal as with a superior. If you are fighting someone who is just as good as you, then any advantage you can get may give you the win."

Leet walked into the room. He was wearing a girlish looking bathrobe with an anime character on the back; it was some spiky haired blonde kid with a headband.

"You guys want any churros?" he asked.

I grinned at him. "How many do you have?"

He looked startled, then panicked. "Not enough. I'm not making two hundred churros just to have you scarf all of them. I'm making normal human portions."

"Ok," I said mildly. "I'll have whatever you've got."

I could always eat later.

"Garrett?" he asked.

Garrett shrugged, then said,"Sure."

"The most important thing is that you don't get overconfident. Just because the guy isn't as strong as you thought doesn;t mean he can't beat you into the ground."

"I'm going to have to see some examples," I said.

"Leet would probably have you try pen and paper roleplaying, or maybe wargaming," Garrett said. "But you seem like you'd learn better if you see it yourself."

"To the Holodeck?" I asked.

"How do you feel about being Batgirl this time?" he asked.

"I get to wear the cape?" I asked slowly. That cape had been one of the coolest things about the guy Garrett kept having me fight.

"Capes are stupid if you aren't Batman," he said. "Or as strong as Alexandria. Of course, who knows, you might get strong enough to rock a cape. For everybody else it just gives enemies something to grab onto, or to trip over."

Tripping over my own cape probably wouldn't be a good entry into the hero world.

"Still," he said. "Let's see how you do."

"And what are you going to have me fighting?"

"Forty men with guns," he said. "Your goal is to beat them without killing them, preferably while using the tactics we've just talked about."

It was going to be harder without my Ki sense, but I suppose that was the point. If I could do it without it, then doing it with it would be even easier.

"All right," I said.

I ached all over my body.

Fighting forty men with guns with good lighting was a lot harder than fighting twenty men in the dark. Without my Ki sense I'd had to rely on other senses and I'd gotten shot a lot.

I'd learned a lot of lessons. First, Capes really were a terrible idea. Having one or two men grab my cape wasn't that big a deal; having five or six pile on slowed me down long enough to get shot a lot. A breakaway cape would solve that, but I'd be replacing them after every fight, and who had that kind of budget?

Second, hiding and using the terrain really did save a lot of pain. It had taken several times before I had finally gotten better at it. Garrett had the simulations response to intimidation, and so I'd learned that sometimes being dramatic really did help.

Fear wouldn't help against someone stronger, but against the weak it might keep me from having to fight at all. It was probably part of what kept Capes from getting killed in the first place. Capes who weren't brutes typically would die as fast as anyone else if they had a gun to their head.

Making people think that attacking them was a good way to get dead was only self protection.

I'd killed eight men the first time we'd run the scenario, five men the second, and only three men the third. By the sixth iteration I hadn't killed anyone. According to Garrett killing someone was considered a failure, and he worked with me, showing me how to be less lethal.

Still, I'd need a lot more practice before I was confident. It helped that he'd done this training under ordinary gravity; it was important to have the right set of reflexes and muscle memory when fighting those weaker.

Against Hookwolf I could apparently hit as hard as I wanted. After all, he'd kill me as soon as look at me.

I was halfway home when I felt a familiar Ki signature flitting on top of the roofs. I'd been using my holographic generator until a couple of blocks before, and so I was fairly sure that she hadn't followed me to Leet's lair.

Still, I'd have to be more careful in the future. I couldn't have her getting suspicious or triangulating his location from the various places she'd seen me.

I limped, walking slowly along. I had a new set of weighted clothes, although these were heavier than the ones before. Leet had seemed annoyed by the fact that I had lost the last ones but Garrett had been philisophical about it.

It was a quiet street, with older apartment buildings lining both sides. If I remembered right, Sophia lived near here; she'd probably seen me walking and had decided to follow me. I still didn't understand her obsession with me, but at least she hadn't been trying to bully me as much.

The street was deserted; I heard a sound in the distance, and if I hadn't known exactly where she was I would have been unnerved.

Was she trying to scare me?

I could feel her even if my eyes couldn't exactly make her out. It took me a moment to realize that she was the shadow that was at the top of one of the fire escapes.

Before I could say anything, she gave an acrobatic flip, and for a disturbing moment she vanished from my Ki sense. It was almost as though she wasn't really there.

A moment later she landed on the ground in front of me.

She was wearing a skintight black bodysuit, with metal kneepads painted black, gauntlets, belts and pockets. She was wearing some kind of metal mask in the shape of a woman's face with a stern expression. It all looked much better made than Sophia should have been able to afford.

I noted disapprovingly that she was wearing a cloak. It looked cool as hell, but I'd just had a lot of experience about why cloaks and capes were terrible ideas. Who was she trying to impress?

"Hey Sophia," I said. "Nice outfit."

She froze.

"You do not know me," she said. She tried making her voice sound deeper and the masked helped some, but it was obviously her.

"I wish I didn't," I muttered.

The fact that she was carrying a crossbow was a little concerning. Was she coming after me? I hadn't practiced with crossbows. They were slower than bullets, so were likely easier to dodge., but I wasn't sure whether they were as good as bullets in terms of penetration. In any case, getting shot in the eye wouldn't be pleasant.

"I don't have time for this." I said. I stared at her for a moment, then shook my head.

I started walking again. It was possible that she would shoot me in the back, but she seemed like the kind who would want to see my expression when she shot me.

As I passed by an alley, I felt her slam into me. She bounced off with a shocked grunt, but I did stumble to the side a little. With what I was wearing and my backpack I weighed six hundred pounds, which was a little more mass than she could handle.

I grabbed her and pulled her into the alley.

"What the hell do you want?"

"You don't out a cape!" she hissed. She tried to push away from me, but couldn't escape my grip. A moment later she turned into a shadow of some kind, misting out of my grasp and taking several steps back.

Well, I suppose that answered the question about whether she was a parahuman or not.

"How was I supposed to know you were a cape?" I asked.

"I'm literally wearing a cape," she said. "I always thought you were weak, but I never thought you were slow."

"Well, how was I supposed to know?"

"Same way I know you're one... you think it's normal to jump off a second story and land without getting hurt?"

"It's not?" I asked. "I just thought you were maybe doing parkour or something."

She pulled off her mask; considering that there weren't any windows in this alley it was probably safe.

"You aren't kidding, are you?" she asked, staring at me. "You really think it's normal for someone to run on roofs and take crazy jumps."

I shrugged.

Now that I knew she really was a cape, it was actually fun to irritate her. She'd done much worse to me.

"It's a tough city," I said. "I figured maybe you just wanted to avoid the Empire."

She scowled. "You thought I'd run from that bunch of idiots?"

"Better than..."

Before I could complete my sentence, I heard a loud boom.

My head snapped around, and I saw fire and smoke coming from a tall apartment building two blocks away.

"Oh God," Sophia said.

For once her face didn't show disdain or anger. Instead she looked genuinely afraid.

"What?" I asked.

"That's my building," she said. "My family is in there."


	21. Fire

"What happened?" Sophia demanded.

The man at the edge of the growing crowd outside the building barely bothered looking back at us. He simply stared, mesmerized by the the flames and smoke billowing out of the building.

"Some idiot had a meth lab on the second floor," he said. "It blew up."

"Nobody told me," Sophia stammered as I turned to look at her.

Had she spent so much time trying to follow me that she'd missed the meth lab in her own building? As a hero she was supposed to be observant.

"Your parents were probably trying to protect you," the man said, glancing back at Sophia.

She'd grabbed a long overcoat and thrown it over her outfit, reasoning that the people in her building wouldn't talk to heroes.

Personally I thought that they'd talk to anybody who could make this better.

"There's twenty seven people on the third and fourth floors," I said. I'd discarded the heavy inserts behind a dumpster, hoping they'd still be there when I got back. I'd also pulled a handkerchief over my face, a nod to Miss Militia and all I could do at the moment to protect my own identity.

"How do you know?" the man asked. He looked back at me and he started.

""The fire escape on the west side fell off the building," Sophia said. "The landlord hasn't bothered to fix it."

"And your parents?" I asked.

"West side."

Right.

Sophia had been a bitch to me, but her family hadn't, and I was hardly going to let them burn to death.

The problem was that my powers weren't the right kind for this. If I'd had Rune's powers I'd have lifted platforms to save people. With Kaisers I'd have made ladders out of stone.

Vista's powers would be perfect for this.

"Somebody call the Protectorate," I said. "Get Vista here; she can help."

Sophia was already digging out her phone, talking frantically into it.

I could see people in the windows screaming, too high to jump. One man did jump, and a moment later he fell to the concrete with a sickening thump. People ran over to him, but I could already feel his Ki fading. He was dead.

Twenty six people were still trapped up there, and at the rate the fire was spreading it would be too late by the time the Protectorate got here.

I was the only hope these people had, and I had no idea how I could save them.

With Stormtiger's winds I could have sucked the air out of the rooms, or blown winds so fast that the fire would have blown out.

I pushed my way through the crowd, and as I reached the front, I could already feel the heat on my face. I hadn't trained for this, but it was here.

A man was holding a water bottle; I grabbed it from him without asking, and I turned a little and doused my handkerchief with it before handing it back to him. I wouldn't be any good to anyone if I could;t breathe.

I ran for the building, and as I reached the base of the brick my legs tensed beneath me. I was at least fifteen times stronger than I should be, and so I shot upward, my hands reaching for a window ledge. I grabbed it and hauled myself upwards, smashing through the window with my fist.

Glasses shattered and if I'd been a normal person my arm would have been cut and sliced to the point that I could have bled out. It only stung a little for me, though, and I hauled myself into the room.

I could barely see; the smoke was thick and heavy, and I coughed despite my handkerchief.

I shoved my way into a bathroom, and I turned the shower on, stepping into it for almost a minute, letting my clothes become utterly soaked. It wouldn't provide a lot of protection from the flames, but it would be a little.

My shoes squished as I stepped out of the bathtub.

"What are you doing?" Sophia asked. She'd gotten rid of the overcoat and was in her outfit. Wearing a metal mask in a fire seemed stupid to me, but she'd chosen to do it. I was glad I wouldn't have to be the one who had to explain the third degree burns on my face.

"Can you take people with you when you phase out or whatever?" I asked, ignoring her question.

She shook her head. "Things maybe."

"Try to keep up," I said.

I kicked the door down and a moment later we were out in a hallway.

"There are people in the first, third and fifth apartments to the right," I said. "We need to get them to the roof."

"What are we going to do there?" she demanded.

"Better the roof than dead here," I said. "Come back and tell me if there's anybody you can't move. I'll move them."

She nodded curtly, not making a single snide comment.

I banged on a door; the Ki of the person inside seemed weak. I shoved the door open, and I saw an old woman on the floor. She was hugely obese, at least four hundred pounds, and a walker had galled over beside her.

"I'm here to help," I said.

A moment later I scooped her up. I could handle her weight, but she was bulky, and getting her through the door was awkward.

Sophia was doing the job of getting everyone out into the corridor. Some of them stopped and stared at me, a slender twig carrying a four hundred pound woman, but they all headed for the stairs.

The smoke in the stairwell was even worse than in the rest of the building. My eyes stung, and I could hear people coughing and gagging as they stumbled blindly upward, holding on to the hand rails or to the person in front of them because they were entirely blind.

I could feel the stairs groaning beneath up as we headed up; whether it was the fire or because the stairs hadn't been built to code, but I'd feel better when everyone was on the room. The others all preceded me; if the stairs gave way because of our combined weight, I wanted as many people to get out as possible.

As we reached the next two floors, I paused, letting the people in front of me get further ahead. I took gasps of slightly fresher air as we stepped into the hallway. I used my Ki sense to detect the life forces of the remaining people inside the building. I told Sophia which rooms had the living in them on the next two floors, and she raced to them. At least once I saw her reach through a door to unlock it to get to the people inside.

I could hear the sounds of arguments inside; apparently Sophia was having to force some of the people from their apartments, even though I wasn't sure why. Didn't they realize the building was on fire?

As the last of the stragglers streamed out in front of us, I stepped back into the smoke filled hell that was the stairwell.

There was an explosion behind us in the stairwell, and a ball of fire exploded.

"Go,Go,Go!" I screamed.

I tried to keep myself between the fire and the woman, but she was much larger than I was. She screamed as the fire washed over us. It hurt as it washed over me, but whether it was because I'd soaked my clothes or because I was tougher than a normal person, that pain faded.

Underneath us the stairs trembled. A moment later they began to collapse. I ran, and as I leaped for the safety of the rooftop, it almost felt for a moment like I wasn't actually touching the stairs.

We staggered to the roof, even as fire exploded from the doorway behind us.

My hoodie was smoking, but whatever Leet had done to it made it somewhat more fire resistant than normal.

The woman in my arms was sobbing. Blisters were already forming on her face and hands and I paused for a moment to pat the fire that had started on her legs. She was probably going to need some kind of surgery when this was all done.

Several of the others were injured as well, but none as grievously as she was. I could see that several people were having trouble breathing, grabbing for their inhalers.

At least half the people in the building were already up on the roof, waiting for us. They'd tried to get down through the stairwell and hadn't been able, so they'd taken the only other route available to them; up.

A quick head count showed us that we had everyone. Some people had brought their animals with them, pet birds and dogs and even a snake. I could understand the urge. The fire department hadn't even showed up yet, and in this part of town the whole building might be ash by the time they did.

"Now what, Heb...Hero?" Sophia asked.

"Does anyone here have asthma or a heart condition?" I asked.

Five hands shot up.

Considering the neighborhood they were living in I shouldn't have felt surprised. In most cities in the US the bad parts of town were on the south and east sides; this was because of prevailing wind patterns. The wealthy liked to be upwind of potential wastes.

"You guys will be next."

I eyed the surrounding buildings. The closest building over was only twenty feet away, but from the expressions on the faces of the people around me they thought that was too far to jump.

I hadn't seen anything in the apartments long enough to bridge the gap either.

I was still carrying the obese woman, and her sobbing and crying was getting annoying, even if I could understand why. Starting with her would get me away from it and let me concentrate on the rest, and it would give the others confidence. She weighed four hundred pounds, and there was no one as large as she was. If I could carry her to the other side that would give the others confidence that I could carry them.

Before anyone could ask what I meant, I started running. The woman was bulky and awkward in my arms, and she screamed as she realized that we were heading for the edge and she started struggling. My grip must have felt like steel for all the difference it made, though. As I ran for it, the woman grabbed my neck tight enough to choke me and buried her face in my neck. She had an unpleasantly sour odor, a smell of sickness.

As we sailed over the gap, I felt my Ki within me, willing it to propel me forward instead of down because I could feel that it was going to be close. For a moment I thought we weren't going to make it.

We did, although I stumbled a little near the edge.

I sat the woman down well away from the edge, and then I headed back. People were staring at me in my waterlogged, smoking clothes, and a moment later they rushed forward.

Sophia barked out orders, gesturing with her crossbow and they stepped back.

"I'm going to save everyone," I shouted.

The first to go was a child. She had to be eight years old. When I grabbed her she shrieked as though I'd pulled his arm off. A quick check showed that I hadn't.

The entire structure shook, and I knew that I didn't have time to be careful of people's feelings. A moment later I tucked her under my arm and I ran.

We sailed easily over the gap, and a moment later I set the child down. I was across the gap again before anyone could say anything, and a moment later I'd grabbed her mother. She was obese, but nothing compared to the first woman I had carried.

Each time I carried someone over I looked at the building on the way back. What I saw wasn't encouraging.

A moment later I'd grabbed up a man this time, and we were across the gap. Over and over again, person after person I brought over.

By the time I'd gotten to the sixth person they'd already gotten the door of the new building open and were making their way down the stairs, all except the obese woman who couldn't walk. She was still moaning.

I insisted on carrying people first, although people who could carry their pets in their arms without scratching me were welcome to do so.

The fire department arrived by the time I was working on my twelfth victim. I could tell it was going to be too late, though. It was already getting hard to breathe on the roof of the building, and the smoke was burning my eyes.

On the one side was the moaning woman; on the other was the sounds of dogs barking and birds crying out; they all sensed that something terrible was happening even if they didn't know what it was.

Or maybe they knew very well what it was, better than what the humans did. Some of the people stubbornly stayed, unwilling to be parted from their pets until the last moment.

Still at least there was air, and even though I was coughing people were getting saved.

I wasn't even sure which of the people were Sophia's family; after a while they all blended together.

By the time I'd grabbed the last of the people, there were only two terrified animals; a large mastiff who had to weigh at least two hundred pounds, and a sweet looking Labrador retriever.

Both were terrified, and I could see their owners watching as I tried to grab them. The mastiff stepped back from me and growled. I could feel the roof shuddering underneath me, and I felt a sudden moment of fear for myself. I was mildly bulletproof, but I doubted that I could survive having an entire building dropped on me, much less being caught on fire.

I lunged forward and cuffed the dog, enough to stun him. I threw him over my shoulder and I grabbed the other dog, throwing him over my other shoulder. He clawed and scratched at my back, but I didn't have time to worry about that as the roof finally fell.

I pushed against the roof, trying to leap forward instead of down. The laws of physics would have told me that if was possible, but I pushed my Ki to the very utmost. We hung still in the air for a moment, and for a moment it almost felt like we were going to fly, but then we began to fall. We didn't fall like we should have, though; instead we fell six floors slowly.

Landing wasn't difficult with that. My legs flexed under me, and I came to a stop in front of the astounded crowd.

Two motorcycles were there, with Armsmaster and Miss Militia there. Vista was getting off the bike as well, apparently she'd ridden with Miss Militia.

"Their owners are in the building next door," I said, letting the dogs drop to the ground. "They'll be back for them soon."

"Miss," he said, taking the leash. "I think you're on fire."

The bottom of my hoodie was smoldering, and I patted it out absentmindedly.

There's a four hundred pound woman on the top of that building. She has burns; I'm not sure how bad they are. You might need the Protectorate to help move her. There were several people with asthma and pretty much everyone is dealing with smoke inhalation. I'd expect the first of them to be coming out in a minute."

"You can't help?" he asked.

"I have a feeling they're more interested in interrogating me than letting me help," I said.

I could see how Armsmaster and Miss Militia were moving to flank me, which was not how people with peaceful intentions would move.

"Stop!" Armsmaster said.

Vista was behind them, and it suddenly felt as though the space around me was growing impossibly distant. I couldn't quite feel what she was doing, but it wasn't intended to let me escape.

I began to gather my energy. Whatever they intended for me, it couldn't be good.

As I gathered more and more energy, I felt the ground tremble underneath me. For a moment I thought it was the result of what I was doing, but a moment later there was a massive boom from behind me as the basement of the building collapsed, and a sinkhole began to spread toward the crowd.

The aura around me was suddenly gone, as Vista moved to protect the crowd. She intended the space between the crowd and the onrushing sinkhole.

I dodged behind the fire truck, pulling off my sweatshirt and hoodie and handkerchief as I did. I tossed them under the fire truck, and then I screamed and started running in the middle of the crowd that suddenly seemed to realize that rubbernecking at the scene of a natural disaster wasn't such a good idea.

Armsmaster seemed to be scanning the crowd, but I was careful to keep my head down and my hair covering my face as I ran past him.

A moment later I was down the street even as the Protectorate heroes were trying to control the crowd.

I hadn't even had my new sweatshirt for two hours and it was already gone.

A quick check behind the dumpster showed that no one had found time to steal the inserts or my backpack. I stuffed the former into the latter, and a moment later I was on my way home.

Sophia was still a bitch, but I'd saved twenty six people, and there wasn't anything she could do to take that away from me. I wasn't sure that would be enough to change me in her eyes, but that didn't matter.

I'd finally done something heroic, something other than getting into a fight and proving to my dad that I was just a fight crazed idiot like most of our ancestors.

Even the woman who had been burned would be dead now if it wasn't for me, and maybe this would improve my reputation with the Protectorate. After all, I hadn't blasted Armsmaster in the face like I'd wanted to, or even made a threatening move toward them.

All in all, I felt pretty good about the day.


	22. Bullying

Sophia shoved me and I fell to the floor.

I could have easily kept my balance but that would have required me using abilities that I didn't want the crowd of girls surrounding me to know I had.

What. The . Hell?

Staring up at her, she smirked down at me and lifted her middle finger before moving on to join the crowd of girls who were sneering down at me. They walked off.

I'd saved her family literally only twelve hours ago, and she was still bullying me?

It didn't make sense. I'd known Sophia was a bitch, but I hadn't realized that she was entirely ungrateful.

Whatever reprieve I'd gotten from the bullying after that night in the junkyard was gone.

Madison tore my art project, Emma called me fat, and one of the other girls threw glue on my seat. Sophia shoulder checked me four times and glowered at me each time as Emma taunted me.

By the time lunch came around I was fuming.

I risked the roof for lunch; I didn't want Emma or the others to realize how much I was eating or to destroy my lunch. Lunch was much more important for me than it was in the past, even if it was only five pounds of cold spaghetti.

I was in the middle of trying to use my Ki to heat my meal, with varying results when I felt Sophia coming up the stairs.

No one else was with her, and so I simply ate faster. I wanted to have a word with her, and it wasn't like she was actually strong enough to hurt me without anyone watching.

She stepped out onto the landing, looking before finally seeing me.

"Is there a reason I shouldn't break every bone in your body?" I asked. "I thought you'd be a little nicer."

"I am," she said quietly.

I stared at her for a long moment, wondering what her definition of being nice was. This seemed like more of the same, if not a little worse.

"Shoving me down is being nice?" I asked at last.

"Emma knows what I am," she said. "And she knows that my family lost everything last night. How do you think she expects me to react to that?"

I thought for a moment. "Get more violent?"

She nodded soberly. "If I go easy on you, then she'll suspect that something is going on. She may be good looking, but she's not stupid."

"O.K.,' I said. "So?"

"Do you really want her knowing that you've got powers and like to dress up in a black hoodie when the Empire has a price on your head?"

"She wouldn't..."

"Who do you think comes up with all the really twisted shit we do?" she asked. "It's not me. I don't mind putting people in their place, but Emma's a master at screwing with your head."

I frowned.

I'd always thought it was Sophia who was in control. After all, I was friends with Emma before she came along. I'd assumed that she was whispering in Emma's ear, convincing her to turn against me.

Sophia was acting like Emma was in charge, which didn't make sense. It wasn't like Emma had powers, or like she could even fight. All she had were words, hurtful, painful words, and a mastery of social standings and social interactions.

It occurred to me suddenly that social interactions were actually a form of fighting, one that I was woefully under equipped to deal with.

"We were friends once," I said, finally, lamely.

She stared at me for a long moment, then seemed to hesitate. Finally she shook her head and pulled something from her pocket. I froze.

It was my mother's flute. I'd put it in my locker because it felt like a good luck charm, a connection to a mother who wasn't partially something alien. When everything else had seemed darkest, I could always touch that flute and feel a sense of closeness to Mom.

I snatched the flute from her hands, cradling it protectively.

"She wants me to give this to her, to do some seriously messed up stuff with it. I told her that you already took it home. I'd suggest that you do that."

I stared at the flute in my hands. What Sophia was saying was horrifying in its implications. Emma had known my mother. My mother had treated Emma like her own child, and Emma had loved her.

Now she wanted to do something like this?

While it was possible that Sophia was lying, I didn't think so. Sophia wouldn't have known how important the flute was to me. She might have casually trashed it along with the other things in my locker, but it wouldn't have meant anything to her.

She certainly wouldn't have known enough to bring it to me as an example of what Emma had planned.

"You can't control her?"

"Can I keep her from saying something to one of the Empire kids when I'm not around?" she asked. She shook her head. "It won't happen. She's twisted."

I stared at Sophia; she seemed to be saying it unironically, as though she didn't realize that she herself was just as twisted, although maybe in a different way.

"So bullying me is the nice thing to do," I said.

I was still having trouble following her logic. Being mean to me was being kind? It seemed to me that her thinking was what was twisted.

"You're probably strong enough to take on a lot of the guys in the Empire," she said. "But all of them? And even if your pops got powers, I doubt he can stand up to them either."

"What did you say about my Dad?" I asked dangerously.

How did she know about my father? If she knew about that, did she know about Garrett and Leet? The holodeck was too large to be moved, and I had no idea how many resources and how much time it had taken Leet to build the first one.

"I saw you and him in the junkyard," she said. "It's how I got collared by the government goon squad and forced to work for them."

I stared at her. Was that why things had been better lately? Was Sophia working for the government now? If she was, then what did that mean? Was she a Ward, or was she working for some other agency that wanted to snatch up powered people despite the Protectorate.

There were rumors on the web that US spy agencies were using parahumans in contravention with the treaty with the Protectorate. The Protectorate stomped down on it whenever they found out about it, but what they didn't know they couldn't catch.

Did they have people watching her?

Were they watching us right now?

"They aren't watching that close," she said, seeing my expression."Not while I'm at school. They're depending on Blackwell and my social worker to do that."

She was quiet for a moment, suddenly shifting back and forth and staring at the ground.

"You didn't have to help me yesterday and you did," she said. She grimaced, as though what she was saying was physically painful. "I owe you for that."

"And so you pay me for it by doing more of what you were already doing?" I asked skeptically. I kept coming back to the same point, because even though I'd heard her explanation it still didn't make sense to me.

"It's possible that my identity might get compromised sooner or later," she said. "And if people remember that I suddenly started being nice to you at the same time that Shadow Stalker started hanging around with the new cape?"

"Who?" I asked.

"Who what?"

"Shadow Stalker?"

She stared at me, then scowled. "I've been in the business for more than a year, kicking ass and taking names. You really don't know who I am?"

"I was focused on the Capes that might actually be able to hurt me," I said, shrugging.

She gritted her teeth. "I can phase my crossbow bolts into people. You might find that a little inconvenient even if you are bulletproof."

I frowned, ignoring the jibe.

"So you aren't going to stop what you're doing."

"It doesn't hurt you," she said. "I doubt I could hurt you at all without a weapon."

"It's humiliating!" I said. "And it encourages the others to keep up with what they're doing."

"So make them stop."

Like it was that easy.

"I've tried," I said. "I've gone to the teachers, to Blackwell, to anybody I can think of. It's always at least three words against one."

"That's only going to get worse," Sophia said. "Blackwell gets a stipend to keep my secret. You really think she's not going to sweep things under the rug for me? Emma's already chomping at the bit to take advantage of it, even though I'm telling her I need to lie low because of the probation."

"Probation?" I asked.

"I may have maimed a guy or two," she said, grimacing. "Totally in the performance of my duties."

I'd done worse than maim someone. What did that mean for me?

Was a brute even worth bothering with? Brute powers were a dime a dozen, while someone who could phase through walls was highly useful in reconnaissance.

"I won't be able to hold her back forever," she said.

"So Blackwell is going to be even more against me? So what do I do?"

"If you were normal I'd tell you to punch her in the face. That'd give her some caution about saying things to you, maybe make her back off some. But you aren't normal, and I think having you punch her wouldn't end up good for anybody."

In that we were in agreement.

"I could always punch you!" I said brightly.

She seemed to take the idea seriously, cocking her head for a moment. Finally she shook her head.

"You killed a guy accidentally. I don't think I'd trust you not to crush my skull or force me to go to my shadow form."

"I've been practicing," I said brightly.

"You think the Protectorate won't investigate if somebody attacks one of their wards?" she asked. "Plus, if skinny Taylor Hebert suddenly beats up on bad ass Sophia Hess, you don't think even those idiots in the Empire won't suspect something?"

"So what do I do?"

"Use her own weapons against her," Sophia said. "Humiliate her, hurt her social standing. Stand up for yourself and stop being such a wimp."

She stared at me for a long moment. "I'll never understand people like you. You've got all this power, but you act like you don't have any. So Emma uses your friendship against you... oh boo hoo. You can't tell me that you don't have just as many secrets of hers that you can use."

I frowned.

"That would just make her meaner."

"Yeah," she said. "It gets worse before it gets better. If she escalates and you back down she'll just think it was a blip. If it hurts every time that she attacks you, she'll start thinking twice about it."

"I... I don't think I can do that."

"You've got to think like a honey badger," she said.

"What?"

"Little bastards, maybe thirty five pounds tops, but they are the meanest mofos in the animal kingdom. You know why they call them honey badgers?"

"Why?" I asked slowly.

"They love honey, so much that when they find a beehive they just stick their face in it and start eating."

I frowned. The idea of being covered in bees wasn't really appealing. It was terrifying in fact, even though I wasn't really sure I could still feel bee stings.

Could I get stung often enough to become immune to them without getting a heart attack from it?

"They've been known to tear the testicles off of lions, to attack hyenas and jaguars and pythons. They'll even attack porcupines. They don't give a crap what they're facing."

She talked like she admired that kind of meanness.

Was the concept of kindness, of caring what other people thought so foreign to her? Even now I didn't really want to break Emma down like she'd been slowly doing to me. All I wanted her to do was stop what she was doing.

We'd never be friends again. I'd never really be able to trust her. But having her just ignore me? That would be great.

Hell, I didn't really want to be talking to Sophia right now, not really.

"I couldn't do that," I said.

"Then it's going to keep getting worse. Can you keep doing this for another year, two years, three years? If she hasn't got tired of it yet, that means she's not going to."

Sophia was silent for a moment. "What happens when you've finally had enough of it and you snap?"

"I wouldn't?"

"Really?" she asked. "You say that now, but what happens when she keeps getting worse and worse and you keep getting more and more sick of it? Do you really want to hear what she wanted to do to that flute?"

I tightened my grip on the flute.

"How hard would it be for you to kill Emma?" she asked. "I'm not talking about deliberately. Just... accidentally? She's slow, wouldn't be expecting a physical attack. Push anybody hard enough, fast enough and they can snap."

For a moment I imagined Emma's pretty neck under my hands and I shuddered. I'd break it easily.

"You did me a solid," she said. "But I'm not telling you this for your sake. It's for hers. If you don't get her to back off, eventually she'll end up dead and you'll end up in jail or in the Birdcage."

"I'm not going to go Carrie on the school," I said.

"On the school?" she said. "Probably not. On Emma? Maybe."

"We need to stop talking about this," I said, holding up my hand. "I'm not like you."

"What do you mean by that?" she asked, her head snapping up and staring at me.

"You act like Emma is the twisted one..." I said.

"You think I don't know I'm twisted?" she asked. She scowled and shook her head. "All of us are. Every parahuman is screwed up because of the things that happened to make us parahuman. I'm just trying to do my best to make the world a better place."

"By bullying people?"

"By protecting my people!" she said. "You saw what it was like last night. Armsmaster saw a bunch of poor folk from the hood and he didn't care that everything that they owned was burning down. For all he knew there could have been people burning to death inside, and all he cared about was catching a white girl."

I frowned. "That doesn't excuse the bullying."

"You think the real world is any different?" Sophia asked. "Bosses treat you like crap all the time. If you don;t learn to stand up for yourself you'll spend the rest of your life getting spit on."

"So it's a community service."

I wasn't the only one Sophia bullied. She did it to a lot of people.

She shrugged. "Somebody's got to teach them what life is really like. If they don't learn it now, they'll learn it later."

"That's bullshit," I said. "What happens if someone starts beating up your little sister?"

She scowled at me. "That wouldn't happen."

"What makes her so special? Is she a fighter?"

"No, but she stands up for herself."

"Like I would have, before all of this?" I asked. "I heard about this girl in Pennsylvania that got attacked by fifty girls and the teachers didn't do anything. She killed herself. How long before one of your victims does something like that?"

"I don't push anybody that hard," she said, sullenly.

"But you add to it," I said. "Maybe all you do is add that last little push that sends them over the edge. Is that all right? Do you really want that on your conscience? These aren't rapists, gang members... even the Empire kids, not really. They're just wanna-be's."

She shifted uncomfortably.

"Screw you, Hebert," she said. "I'm trying to help you and you don't have to be such a bitch."

I opened my mouth to tell her something else, but I froze. I could feel Emma coming up the stairs.

Sophia caught my look and she said, "Somebody coming?"

"Emma," I said.

She grinned, and it wasn't a very nice grin. "You've got a choice then. Let her know we're buddy buddy all of a sudden, and have the Empire at your door by next week, or let me beat on you."

"What about your probation?" I asked.

"What the cops don't know won't hurt them," she said. "And besides, if Emma sees this, it might satisfy her for a little while."

I hesitated, but I could feel that Emma was nearing the top of the stairs.

"Tick tock Hebert. Time's wasting."

I scowled finally and said, "Fine, whatever."

I shoved my flute into my backpack, along with the remainder of my dinner.

She grinned, and as Emma reached the top of the stairs and opened the door, Sophia whispered, "You'd better sell this."

A moment later she punched me in the gut. I could feel it, but it didn't really hurt. I still staggered back.

"That's what you get, Hebert!" Sophia said. "Hiding like a little rat."

I stared up at Emma, looking for any signs of regret, signs that watching what Sophia was doing gave her any hesitation. Instead all I saw was a sick sort of pleasure.

Sophia was turned away from her, but her expression was one of pain. It took me a moment to realize that it wasn't emotional pain at what she was doing.

Punching me in the stomach was physically painful.

It gave me at least a little satisfaction to realize that this was actually hurting Sophia more than it was hurting me. She was committed enough to the performance that she wasn't pulling any punches though, even though she would probably be questioned about swollen knuckles when she went in to the Wards.

Still, I'd have to do something about Emma, sooner or later.


	23. Interlude PHO

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 **Topic: Tragedy in Brockton Bay.  
In: Boards ► News ► Events ► America**

► **Shadowfax**  
Posted on February 2nd 2010

Does it bother anyone that the Brockton Bay fire department essentially let these people's home burn to the ground, not showing up until it was way too late? If it wasn't for the Hood there would be twenty six corpses in the middle of the rubble instead of just one.

I've noticed a disturbing tenancy; the city responds to fires in the richer neighborhoods in eight minutes or less, but fires in the poorer neighborhoods don't get attended to for more than twenty minutes. The fire department likes to cite budget cuts, but I've heard sources saying that it's because they are afraid of the gangs in the poor areas.

Does anyone believe that, or do they think there's something more sinister at work?

Does the city not care about minorities or the poor? City services tend to be directed disproportionately toward the affluent areas while the poorer areas are completely ignored.

Studies have shown that past eight minutes a fire can easily quadruple in size. By the time the firefighters get there they are basically just there to keep it from spreading.

► **Laotsunn** (Kyushu Survivor)

Replied on February 2nd 2010

You are beginning to sound like Void Cowboy my friend. There is no conspiracy, only a lack of money and fear that they will be attacked by the gangs. Merchants in particular have attacked ambulances hoping to get access to the drugs they have on board. These men were hired to walk into fires, not get shot at.

► **XxVoid_CowboyxX**  
Replied on February 2nd 2010

I feel bad for those guys in the building. It's a good thing that the Hood was there to save them. She even saved their dogs too! I think she's my new hero!

► **Krystalnaught (Temp-banned)**  
Replied on February 2nd 2010

She is not a hero. She is a murderer who must be brought to justice. I have heard that the Empire has increased the reward for her capture to $50,000. Anyone who has knowledge of her location should inform those who can see that justice is done.

 **USER HAS RECIEVED AN INFRACTION FOR THIS POST**  
TinMother: Calls to violence are not acceptable. Enjoy your ban.

► **XxVoid_CowboyxX**  
Replied on February 2nd 2010

Is anybody even sure the Hood from the video is the same person who the Empire is after? After all, hoodies are practically the school uniform at my school. It's hardly fair to go after a girl just because she likes the same clothes that every other teenage girl in a thousand mile radius likes.

► **InsesantScreamer**  
Posted on February 2nd 2010

There are not that many Brutes in the bay. Which seems more likely; that two brutes came into the bay at the same time who have similar builds, hair and tastes in clothing, or that one brute was in both places? I know which one I would bet on.

► **XxVoid_CowboyxX**  
Replied on February 2nd 2010

That video of her landing with the dogs is bad ass! It was like she was riding the building down. Why are we calling her the hood, anyway? Is it because she wears hoodies? Or is it because she's the defender of the Hood, even though she's a skinny white girl?

► **Laserbleeped** (Cape Groupie)

Replied on February 2nd 2010

It looked like Armsmaster and Miss Militia and Vista didn't even try to save anybody in the building. All they cared about was capturing the Hood. Doesn't that give a little credence to Shadowfax's initial thesis? If you aren't rich and white, the Protectorate doesn't care about you?

► **Coyote-C**

Replied on February 2nd 2010

Well, Armsmaster and Miss Militia aren't really qualified as fire fighters, and their powers aren't really all that useful in a fire. Vista would have been, had the Hood not already saved everyone. At least Vista had her priorities straight when she saw that the ground was going to injure more people.

► **Laotsunn** (Kyushu Survivor)

Replied on February 2nd 2010

Pity that a child was able to see what adult members of the Protectorate did not.

► **XxVoid_CowboyxX**  
Replied on February 2nd 2010

We're all dancing around the elephant in the room. What does anybody know about the Hood? She's obviously a brute, but does anyone know anything else about her powers?

► **Shadowfax**  
Posted on February 2nd 2010

What do we need to know? She's strong, fast and doesn't care whether people are rich or poor. She's a white girl who saves black people and Asians, and the Nazis hate her. If she's got other powers she hasn't shown them yet, but most capes like to keep a little something held in reserve just in case. Let's leave her that.

► **Coyote-C**

Replied on February 2nd 2010

You act like she's some kind of hero, but she's already killed at least one guy and maimed another. Real heroes don't do that. She's just as much of a freak as that Shadow Stalker if you ask me.

► **Shadowfax**  
Posted on February 2nd 2010

Didn't know you were an Empire apologist, Coyote. People get into fights and sometimes things go wrong. What would have happened if those guys had been caught by the cops and decided to fight back? You think they wouldn't have got shot? She stopped a rapist and you're acting like she's some kind of serial killer.

► **XxVoid_CowboyxX**  
Replied on February 2nd 2010

Isn't that how Armsmaster was reacting? Maybe the Protectorate knows something the rest of us don't.

► **WhiteKnight** (Verified PRT Agent) (Brockton Bay PRT)

Replied on February 2nd 2010

The parahuman known as the Hood is wanted in connection with at least one crime, possibly manslaughter as well as the maiming of at least six men. She's not a hero, she's a menace. The public at large is advised to stay away from her and to report her location at the earliest time they can manage.

► **Shadowfax**  
Posted on February 2nd 2010

So that the PRT can turn her over to the Empire? Everybody knows that the PRT has more Empire agents in it than a medium sized White Power rally. How else is it that the Empire is never there when the Protectorate decides to have a raid? It's either that or the PRT doesn't really want to fight the Empire. Maybe it's all for show, a way to collect taxpayer money without actually having to do anything other than sit around and look impressive in all that black armor.

► **WhiteKnight** (Verified PRT Agent) (Brockton Bay PRT)

Replied on February 2nd 2010

The PRT and Protectorate take the safety of the citizens very seriously. I resent the implication that we are attempting to set anyone up to be killed by the Empire.

► **XxVoid_CowboyxX**  
Replied on February 2nd 2010

You're saying that nobody in the organization would be tempted by fifty thousand dollars just to make a phone call?

► **DigitTalia**  
Replied on February 2nd 2010

At least she's trying to do something. What other heroes do we have in the Bay? The Protectorate just sits up in the rig and collects paychecks while not doing anything. Glory Girl flies around and beats people up for fun, but she's more worried about clothes and boys than actually helping someone. When was the last time that New Wave actually rescued anyone? They mostly just hide at home too.

The Hood is new, but at least she's trying. She's standing up for the little guy when nobody else will.

 **End of Page. 1,** **2** **,** **3**

►M **isgae84**  
Replied On Feb 2nd 2010:

We are getting off the original topic. I was at the battle between the Protectorate and the ABB last week, and I was trapped in my car and the heroes didn't even bother trying to save me. They didn't even apologize later!

► **buryitnow**  
Replied On Feb 2nd 2010:

That happened to me too! There was a firefight last year between the Merchants and the Protectorate and they didn't even try to get the bystanders out of the area. I have video if anyone is interested.

► **XxVoid_CowboyxX**  
Replied on February 2nd 2010

Nobody wants to see your tired old year old video. My question is do you think the Hood is single?

► **DigitTalia**  
Replied on February 2nd 2010

Maybe people should start posting their stories. If the Protectorate isn't protecting people, maybe the world needs to know about that.

 **(Showing page 6 of 7)**

► **DigitTalia**  
Replied on February 10th 2010

How many anecdotes are we going to have to hear before we realize that Shadowfax was right? The Protectorate isn't protecting anybody except the rich side of town and their own bottom line. When are we going to get someone who is actually out for the little guy?

►M **isgae84**  
Replied On Feb 10th 2010:

The Hood just stopped a group of Empire thugs from attacking another local business. What is this, the third one in a week? She's really upping her game.

► **XxVoid_CowboyxX**

Replied On Feb 10th 2010:

Did you guys see the mural on the corner of sixth street? It's this huge picture of the Hood standing over a bunch of Nazis and ABB guys. Whoever painted it is going to be in a lot of trouble if the gangs catch them.

► **buryitnow**

Replied On Feb 10th 2010:

I think it's one of the Merchants doing it. I've seen at least three of those paintings around the city. My bet is that the Merchants are trying to egg the other two groups into spending all their time looking for this Hood girl instead of taking care of business. Skidmark is a lot smarter than people give him credit for.

► **XxVoid_CowboyxX**

Replied On Feb 10th 2010:

If he was smart he wouldn't have called himself Skidmark.

► **Krystalnaught (Temp-banned)**  
Replied on February 2nd 2010

The Empire is closing in on the murderer. Sooner or later justice will be served, not only on her, but on those who have been holding her up as a hero to the lesser races. It is an inevitability, and soon the balance will be restored.

► **XxVoid_CowboyxX**

Replied On Feb 10th 2010:

How did you get on here? I thought you were banned. They never let me on when I am banned.

► **DigitTalia**  
Replied on February 10th 2010

We should all be so lucky. So what do we do about the Protectorate?

► **Shadowfax**  
Posted on February 10th 2010

Talk to your politicians. The Protectorate depends on the goodwill of the local government to operate. If enough of you scream long and loud enough the Protectorate might actually have to get up off their asses and actually do something instead of twiddling their thumbs all day.

* * *

Sophia cricked her neck, grimacing.

She wasn't sure how she'd let Emma talk her into this. It was vengeance, sure, but it was distant and empty, nothing like the visceral thrill of feeling someone's nose crunch under her fist. Still, Emma really did know what she was doing about manipulating the public.

Create a narrative that people could believe, and making them believe it wasn't all that hard.

If they'd left things alone, the thread would have died three pages ago, but whenever things seemed to be dying down a little, Shadowfax would say something to fan the flames again, to enrage the people who thought the Protectorate wasn't their friend.

Emma had been excited to help, and she'd been skilled at fanning the flames. It had been her idea to make the Hood a lightning rod, a hero of the people. Sophia wondered what Emma would think if she realized that she was making Hebert's alter-ego more popular in the process of screwing over the Protectorate.

Her head would explode.

Starting a PHO page to screw the Protectorate wasn't really Sophia's style, but it was all that they'd left her able to do. They kept tightening the noose around her tighter and tighter, and it was getting harder and harder to get any relief from the day to day pressures in her life.

It didn't help that she was having to pretty much live full time with the Wards while her family looked for a place to stay and a way to put their shattered lives back together.

Sneaking out of her own home to have unsupervised patrols was easy. Sneaking out of the Rig was almost impossible, at least not without using tricks that she was holding in reserve just in case she should have to escape for real. Using those would only get those security flaws repaired, making it harder for her to escape when she really needed to.

Taking out her rage on Hebert was useless; nothing she did really hurt the girl, and when she saw Sophia taking out her anger on others, she had this look of disappointment on her face, like she'd expected something more of Sophia.

Screw her.

Who did Hebert thing she was, judging her like that? Did she think that just because she'd saved Sophia's family that Sophia was going to turn into some kind of goodie two shoes?

It made her want to beat on people even more, but she knew that she had to watch herself. It was looking like the like that she'd told Hebert about Blackwell looking the other way was actually true, but she was still having to be careful until she was sure.

She couldn't even surf the Internet in her room without having all of her communications monitored. She was forced to post on Winslow's shitty computers on a fake account to even get people to pay attention.

In a way, the whole Internet campaign was a big middle finger to everyone who had eve screwed her- the Protectorate, the gangs, even Hebert for looking at her with those big, disappointed cow eyes.

If Hebert had been a little more willing to stand up for herself, none of this would have happened in the first place.

Going along with Emma's plan didn't cost her anything, and as far as she could tell, Hebert hadn't even really noticed. It made the Empire and the ABB look like idiots, which was good in her books and it tweaked the nose of the Protectorate even more.

They were already planning to murder Hebert anyway, so it didn't even make her situation any worse. It might even make it better.

After all, Armsmaster might think twice about making the hero of the people disappear.

If he did, it would turn people against him even more.

In the long run, if it made the Protectorate get off their collective asses and actually do something, especially to protect poor people, it might al be worth it. Sophia suspected that even Hebert would agree with that one, even though she wasn't going to bother asking.


	24. War

"What did you think of the paintings?" Leet asked.

"That was you?" I asked.

Somehow Leet didn't seem like the kind to be able to create art, much less building sized art, and I wasn't certain why he was bothering even if he could. He'd only recently begun to thaw to me. I could tell that he was still afraid we'd all be attacked and killed by the Empire.

"I had Garrett do it in miniature, and then I had the drones spray paint them in the middle of the night. They're cool, and people are wondering how we put thirteen of them up in a single night."

"Why would you do that?" I asked.

"You'd been fighting them on and off for a week," Leet said. He looked uncomfortable. "Making me look bad, like a coward."

Privately I thought he'd been doing that himself, but wisely I didn't say anything.

"Then it occurred to me that they'd have been coming for me whether you were here or not," Leet said. "A white Tinker who can make the shit I can make? They'd have been knocking at my door the minute they could catch me."

This was the first time he'd thought about that? I thought it was common knowledge that Tinkers were forced into the gangs the minute they could arrange it.

"So if we're going to go after them, we should go big," he said. He smiled weakly. "The murals are a big middle finger at the Empire, but they don't know we were the ones who did them. They'll be busy looking around, and that'll give us time to make our move."

"Our move?" I asked. "I'm not out to fight the Empire! They just happened to be hitting a few of my favorite restaurants and I stopped them."

"And how long do you think it'll be before they have every restaurant in the city staked out?" he asked. "You'd better get used to Chinese, because the only place you'll be able to eat is in ABB territory, at least until they catch on."

"I don't have the power to take on the Empire," I said. "There's only one of me, and there's a lot of them."

"I've been thinking about that," he said. "There may be some things I could do to help make you more effective. I've been thinking about this drone system I could use to blanket the city. If we knew where the Empire capes were, you could take them out one by one."

"That's a lot of confidence in a girl you said fought like a drunken monkey last week."

"You should have told me Garrett was teaching you drunken boxing," he said, shrugging. "Besides, those videos we uploaded of you fighting the Empire have way more hits than that Pokemon thing we did."

They still hadn't forced me to join in their antics, and I dreaded the moment they did. I owed it to them, but knowing Leet I'd end up dressed as Sailor Moon or Kagome from InuYasha.

"I'm still a little upset that you had the cameras following me," I said. "What the hell was that?"

"Garrett suggested it; if you needed backup I might be able to send some drones. I've built some with weapons; real weapons not just holograms. They've got stealth like a Predator too."

"So they're Predator drones," I asked slowly.

"Don't be bitchy," he said. "They might save your life someday."

"You know I can bench press a ton, right?" I asked. "Calling me bitchy doesn't seem very smart."

"Who're you gonna get to maintain the holodeck?" he asked. "And good luck training without it. You'd have to carry a Volkswagen on your back to get a good run now, and that would be pretty obvious to the Empire."

I wasn't running out in public anymore. The holodeck simulated running environments easily enough, and that meant that I wasn't out in public conspicuously.

Dad also felt it was probably safer if I wasn't around any more all you can eat restaraunts for a while, no matter how much it might cost us. If I really needed to go, he promised to drive me to Boston himself.

I noticed that he'd been eating a lot more recently, and I suspected that he was upping his training. It was probably because he thought the confrontation with the Empire was inevitable.

"It still doesn't make sense to antagonize them," I said. "Fight them, sure. That's going to happen no matter what. But getting them riled up for no reason is a good way to get people hurt."

An image of a hanging woman appeared in my mind. The last thing I needed was for the Empire to start killing random taggers in my name. If they did, I really would have to go after them.

"Thing is," Leet said. "I would never have fought them if you hadn't come around. I still don't know if I will. But I've been more inspired in the past week or two than I ever was before, making weapons to defend this place. It's almost like my power approves."

Talking about powers liking anything sounded a little crazy, but then Leet had never struck me as being particularly stable. He was like Greg Veder grown up, so focused on his games and so awkward socially that I wondered sometimes if he'd ever had a girlfriend.

Garrett seemed so much more normal, despite the fact that he loved all the things that Leet loved.

"I don't want to kill anybody," Leet said. "I never did. But I'm not going to let them roll over me either."

He was trembling a little as he said it, and I suspected that he'd fold like a stack of cards the minute the first shot was fired, but I still appreciated the sentiment. I wondered if Garrett had been talking to him.

"Maybe you should talk about any promotional things with Garrett before you do them," I said. "He's pretty good about figuring out how people will take them."

I wasn't sure whether he was or not, but he had to be better than Leet.

"Just us against an army," I said. "I hope you've got something up your sleeve."

"I'm trying to design Terminators, but even with a replicator the living parts are a bitch," he said.

"Wouldn't the metal skeletons be enough?" I asked. "Might even be a good kind of irony for Nazis to be beaten by guys with skull heads. Besides, couldn't you just put holograms on them, like you've got me wearing on the way here?"

He brightened suddenly. "That would be a lot easier!"

He sometimes worried so much about style that he forgot that a half dozen almost perfect robots were more dangerous than one with a few extra bells and whistles.

A moment later he was rushing downstairs to his lab, muttering to himself.

I still hadn't been allowed down there, as though I would be the Dee Dee to his Dexter.

It was a little disturbing that I was starting to understand their references. The fact that Leet tricked me into watching with them with promises of food was probably part of it. He was a surprisingly good cook, even if he never made enough to really get me full.

Apparently their channel covering my battles had earned enough money that they were considering using their drones to cover other battles. Leet was considering making it its own channel, a kind of Cape news network.

Privately I suspected they would have a lot more success with that than their idea of being roving pranksters or minor super villains. Personally I still thought Leet should try setting up his own special effects house for the movies. He'd make a lot more money with a lot less risk.

Of course, if that happened there were movie companies that would be happy to help him dismantle the holodeck and his lab and move them to Los Angeles, so maybe it was better that things stayed the way they were.

Still, I'd rather play Tuxedo Mask than Sailor Moon; maybe I could convince Leet that as the lead her role should go to him. With the holographic projectors gender didn't matter.

Garrett came out of the showers, his hair still wet.

"Was Leet bothering you?"

"He's behind the murals," I said. "Maybe you can get him to stop helping."

"Give him a break," he said. "He's trying at least. And it's not like the Empire doesn't have it out for you."

"Yeah," I said. "But what happens when they go after the taggers looking for who's responsible?"

He thought for a moment then grimaced. "I'll try to get him to tone it down."

"All right," I said. "I'm heading home."

Although I was no longer jogging outside the holodeck, we couldn't risk Dad picking me up close by; sooner or later someone would make a connection.

There was a bus stop nearby, and I had gotten into the habit of taking the bus to a spot closer to home. It wasn't ideal, but it was usually late by the time I was done with training, and I switched between thirteen different forms so that there never seemed to be a pattern for anyone to pick up on.

On the way to the bus stop I practiced with my Ki detection. My range was increasing; I could detect out to two blocks now, and that made hiding from people easy.

Slipping onto the bus, I paid my fare and sat down. After more than a week I could have called the bus driver out by name, but I didn't because from his perspective he'd never seen me before. I still hadn't run through my original thirteen forms.

Leet had promised to give me another thirteen regenerations, whatever that meant.

Right now I was in the form of an elderly white man. Leet had been sure to avoid any ethnic skins because of the possibility they would get me harassed by the Empire. Even in ABB territory whites were ubiquitous enough not to be noticed.

The bus lurched into motion, and I allowed myself to sag. I was tired as I always was after training, but at least I didn't stink. Garrett let me use their shower, which was surprisingly non-gross for a couple of bachelors. He and Leet had separate areas, though, and I suspected that Leet was a slob.

We were up to six times normal gravity, which meant that I weighed six hundred pounds even before my weighted clothes. Even as strong as I was now it was a struggle. Still, I was undeniably getting much stronger, and I had a feeling I wouldn't be a low level brute much longer.

I watched the city pass by as I felt exhaustion wash over me, feeling the people with my Ki.

Mostly the people were sitting or laying down, which was as it should be at this time of the night. Up ahead, though, I could feel people standing by their windows. There was a group of people on the ground too.

For a moment I hesitated. Then I stood up.

"This is my stop," I said.

I'd promised Dad I would stay out of trouble, but I hadn't promised that I would turn a blind eye. Whatever was happening up ahead was likely bad, and if it wasn't I'd just run home. It wasn't like I hadn't done it before, and I always stopped well short of the house anyway.

I got off the bus and waited for it to move off. No one was around and so I switched the holographic emitter off, shifting into my own form.

I moved carefully down the block, slipping my weighted clothes off.

"Where is your savior now?" I heard a man shout as I looked around the corner.

I grimaced.

Crusader was standing there in his armor and with his spear. A dozen of his ghosts were holding several men hostage. As I watched, one of them shoved a ghostly spear through a man's chest. He screamed horribly, and a moment later felt to the ground, a spreading pool of blood growing underneath him.

"These are your people," Crusader shouted. "Men whose only crime was to believe in some kind of savior instead of turning to those who are trying to stop the onrushing tide. They actually dared to paint on our walls."

Most of the men who were held were teenagers I saw.

Letting more people die because of me was a non-starter. I couldn't fight the ghosts; from what I'd read on the PHO their spears would go right through armor, but they themselves were immune to harm. That meant that the only way I was going to be able to beat him was to take down Crusader himself.

I'd have to kill him, or at least render him unconscious in a single blow, or the ghosts would kill the hostages, or actually hold them hostage so I would go with him.

I enjoyed a good fight as much as anyone, but this wasn't going to be a good fight, not against things I couldn't hit effectively.

My only option was to end this quickly. I'd been holding my energy blasts in reserve; so far I hadn't needed them. However, he was in the middle of the street and I was a block away. They'd see me long before I got to him, and then they'd hold the hostages.

I took aim with my hand and I gathered my will. I wasn't as good as aiming as I would like; Leet still wouldn't let me practice inside the holodeck, even at low power, and I rarely got to practice outside.

Fortunately, unlike a gun I didn't have to worry about correcting for distance. Gravity didn't affect my energy blast and neither did the wind or any of the other things that affected a bullets progression.

He shifted at the last moment and his arm disappeared in a pray of blood. Apparently my blasts were stronger than a gunshot now.

I tried to hit him again, but the ghosts had already dropped the hostages and come floating toward me.

Scaling the roof beside me was easy; brick was as easy for my fingers to penetrate as putty, and it only took me a moment to reach the roof.

The ghosts didn't seem to have any sort of supernatural senses; it took them a moment to realize that I was on the roof, and by that time I was already running across the roof, ready to launch myself at Crusader.

The hostages were already running away, which was good, all except the dead one.

A moment later I was dropping, running toward him.

He'd kept three of the ghosts with him, and they lunged toward me with those spears. It didn't matter; I was faster than they were, and I'd practiced this very scenario only three days ago. I slid under their spears like a baseball player sliding into first place, and a moment later I was up.

My fist lunged down, and I could feel bone give way.

The ghosts vanished around me, and I looked down at the growing pool of blood underneath Crusader. I'd killed again, and the whole battle had taken less than a thirty seconds..

People were at their windows, and I could see cell phones held up, recording what had happened.

"This is my message to the Empire," I shouted, touching the holographic emitter to change my voice. It deepened it and disguised it. "This battle is between us. Involve innocents and I will not hold back! These are my people, and I will protect them!"

A moment later I heard the sounds of sirens in the distance. I dashed down the center of the street back the way I had come. I waited until I was out of sight to switch on the holographic projector, and I grabbed my weighted clothes with my hand that wasn't covered in viscera.

I slowed to a walk just as PRT vans turned the corner and headed straight for the combat.

They were late again. I saw Armsmaster's bike flash by, and I wondered if he'd try to arrest me again if he saw me.

The fact that my hand was covered in fluids didn't help, and I waited until I found a water hose to try to wash it off. Murdering Crusader was likely only going to make the Empire more determined to kill me, but I didn't see that I'd had another choice considering that he'd had hostages.

Dad would probably be disappointed that I'd killed again, but eleven people were alive because I'd interfered. I couldn't regret that no matter what else happened.

Still, this couldn't continue. I'd been foolish to call the Empire out, and I suspected that what I'd said would only escalate their use of hostages. That in turn would mean that I myself would have to escalate, and there wasn't a lot of room to escalate from crushing someone's skull.

For all his powers, Crusader's face had crushed as easily as a melon.

Not all of them would be so easy. Cricket was fast, possibly faster than me. Fenja and Menja grew more durable the bigger they got. Hookwolf was a monster.

If they came at me all at once I was dead. Maybe Leet's idea of taking them out one by one wasn't an entirely bad one. One on one it might mean that I wouldn't have to kill them, and if the PRT was busy holding and defending them there would be less time to come after me.

After all, this made at least two murders they thought they had on me.

I was going to have to be more proactive, or one day I was going to find the Empire knocking at my door... and if they did, I likely would no longer have a house left.

Besides, they were going to keep hurting people until they found me, which was something I was not going to allow.

I was going to have to go to war, and the strange thing was that instead of feeling afraid, I felt excited.


	25. One down

"I'm not comfortable with this," Dad said.

"They're coming for me," I said. "Whether we like it or not, it's going to happen. The only option is to hit them first, and hit them hard."

"Do you think you can manage that?' he asked. "Fighting Capes isn't like fighting normal people; there are always surprises. Couldn't you just run away?"

"For a while maybe, but how many people will they hurt trying to draw me out? How long will it be before I can't take the guilt of people being tortured or dying because I'm too afraid to fight?"

He stared at me for a long moment, then shook his head. "It wasn't ever going to work, the peace thing. I'd hoped that you could be like me and set it aside, but that's not going to happen, is it?"

"If you hadn't had me or mom, would you have set it aside?" I asked.

He was silent for a long moment, then he sighed.

"So how are we going to do this?" he asked. "Finding them when they are along is going to be the hardest part; keeping them from calling for help will be second. The actual fight is actually going to be the easiest part unless you intentionally draw it out because you are enjoying it."

"I wouldn't do that!" I said, scandalized.

"It's happened before," he said. "Here's what I want you to promise me; if you are going to do this, you go in hard and you take them out as quickly and as efficiently as you can. If you can avoid killing them, great, but staying safe is more important."

"So I didn't do wrong, killing Crusader?"

Dad's face turned cold. "Killing is always wrong. Sometimes the other alternatives are more wrong. He stumbled across a group of taggers and took them and their families hostage. He murdered people In cold blood. He deserved anything he got. More importantly, I'm not sure you could have fought his ghosts, not by yourself. You had to take him out or he would have killed or hurt you."

It felt odd having Dad suggest that murder was the better choice. I'd questioned myself whether I could have knocked him out instead of killing him, but I couldn't see any other way. Knocking someone out wasn't like the movies. If you hit them hard enough to knock them unconscious then you most likely did brain damage, and killing was only a step away.

"So how do I do this?" I asked.

"Attack the weakest first," he said. "If you were strong enough to take on their strongest capes and be sure of winning I'd tell you to chop them off at the head. Take out Kaiser and they might even break up and start fighting among themselves. The problem is that Kaiser is never alone and his power is a hard counter to yours."

He meant that Kaiser would most likely kill me.

"But if you can make the Empire look weak, there is a chance that Lung or maybe even the Merchants will move and do some of your work for you."

"People will get killed then too," I said dubiously.

"There's no way you are getting out of this without someone getting hurt," Dad said. "But at least this way your enemies will take each other out."

"So who are the weakest?" I asked.

"For you?" he asked. "Rune and Othalla. Alabaster will be hard or impossible to kill, but easy to capture. Viktor steals skills, so you'll have to be careful with him."

"And the ones to avoid are Kaiser, Hookwolf and Purity," I said. "Maybe Krieg, depending."

"I'm not sure how you'd do against Fenja or Menja," he said. "They say Cricket is fast and can disorient people, so she might be tough. You can't beat someone you can't hit."

"Stormtiger?" I asked.

He shrugged. "They say he can hear you coming from a mile away. I'm not sure how hard he hits with his winds either."

So four possibles, with Othalla more difficult than she seemed because she was rarely alone. It wouldn't be easy running a guerilla campaign even with Leet's help.

It'd be easier if the Protectorate would help, but the impression I'd gotten from Sophia was that they weren't interested in doing anything to rock the boat.

Even worse, they were rarely alone. Usually the weaker members either banded together or they accompanied one of the big hitters. They usually had backup in the form of goons too, although those wouldn't be much of an impediment.

"So what do I do?"

"The first thing you need is intelligence," Dad said. "The important thing at this stage is not to get caught. There are criminals who get caught casing a joint, or whose Internet searches lead right to them. You don't want that to be you."

"How do you know AL this?" I asked.

"Lustrum fought other supervillains," he said. "And there may have been a time or two I helped your mother, with planning at least."

"Then what?"

"Then you need a plan," Dad said. "Surprise is really good, ambushes make it hard for them to get you and you want to cut off communications. A signal jammer doesn't even have to be tinkertech to stop a cell phone call."

"Aren't those illegal?"

"You're out assaulting and possibly killing people," Dad said. "Signal jammers are the least of your worries."

"I've got mixed emotions about ambushing them," I said. "Part of me would rather just attack them head on."

"That's the part of you that will get yourself killed," Dad said. He shook his head. "Our family can be stupid about that kind of thing."

We were both silent for a long moment.

Dad continued. "You might try raiding some of their stash houses. The point of Guerrilla warfare isn't just to whittle down their forces. It's also to gain popular support. One of the Empire's strongest assets is that there are a lot of people sympathetic to them. Part of that is that people assume that they are the only defense against Lung and the Merchants."

"And the racists," I said.

"The racists will always be there," Dad said. "But the rest are just people who are afraid. Those are the people who can be swayed to your side. If they stop looking for you, stop helping the Empire then your life gets easier."

"All right," I said. "Let's get started."

* * *

"I've been looking into your career as Shadow Stalker," I said.

We were on the roof again. I was eating my lunch and Sophia was supposed to be bullying me. With no one around, she was instead stealing some of my meal, which irritated me. That may have been part of the point.

"Yeah?" she asked suspiciously.

"So I'm guessing you know where some of the Empire stash houses and drug houses are," I said. "Since stealth was kind of your thing."

"I might," she said. "Why do you want to know?"

I could see on her face that she knew exactly why, but she wanted me to say it out loud. She wanted for me to ask her for help, after everything she'd done to me.

I gritted my teeth but forced myself to remain outwardly calm.

"The Protectorate doesn't let you hit them, does it?" I asked.

"You want to hit the Empire," she said. "You know they've been buzzing around like a beehive since you cracked Crusader's melon."

She stared at me for a moment, then grinned, her white teeth startling against the darkness of her skin. "That was a good job. I've seen the videos... it couldn't have happened to a more deserving Nazi."

"So you'll help me?" I asked.

She bit her lip. "It's going to cost you."

"What?" I asked slowly.

"Emma's got something humiliating lined up; you're going to let it happen," she said.

I stared at her, then scowled. "I don't understand why you care what Emma thinks."

"You think you're the only one that's got something to lose from her?" she asked. "She knows who I am. All it takes is one word in the wrong ear, and I wake up to find my family murdered in the middle of the night."

"Emma wouldn't do that!" I protested.

"Like she wouldn't turn on you on a dime?" she asked. "I used to think she was cool, but ever since you've been getting all confident and shit and ducking most of her crap, she's been getting crazier than a shithouse rat."

"And you think letting her humiliate me would make her more normal."

"Couldn't hurt... me at least," she said. "That's the price."

"What does she want to do?" I asked.

"I couldn't spoil the surprise," she said, smiling unpleasantly. "After all, it won't look real if you aren't in the moment."

"Fine," I said. "Whatever it takes."

"That's what it'll take if you want to make the Empire bleed," she said. She smiled again, and this time it seemed more open and honest. "Let me tell you about a few places that are probably going to be up your alley."

I nodded and I started taking notes.

* * *

I could sense it from two blocks away; forty people gathered in a small area that should have only held five or ten.

Leet had built me a cell phone jammer small enough to put in my pocket. It would block all calls in a one block radius, and I could wait to set it off until I got close; he suggested that they would know what was happening if I used it earlier than I had to.

I didn't detect any parahumans, which was good, but I didn't know what kind of weapons they had, which wasn't as good. Small arms only left bruises on me, but it was possible that they had armor piercing bullets or high caliber weapons. I couldn't afford to take anything for granted.

An anti-tank missile would probably kill me if it hit, and this was one of their major drug distribution hubs.

While the Empire didn't sell as many drugs as the Merchants, it was still one of their major sources of income. This warehouse was the holding area for a lot of their drugs, and if I took it out it would cost them a lot of money and prestige.

This was the last thing Sophia had been working on before she'd been caught, one of the Empire's big secrets. Just knowing about it would be enough to get someone and their family killed. Of course, that meant that it was heavily fortified, even if it didn't look it from the outside.

Sophia had never been able to get close enough to see all of their defenses, but she'd seen a stream of trucks moving in and out at all hours of the day, other than during school hours when she'd been unable to watch.

The Empire owned all the warehouses in the block surrounding it too, and they made sure to keep those deserted. Property was cheap enough in the Bay that buying a few warehouses wasn't as big of an investment as it would have been in other parts of the country.

Still, at a quarter million per warehouse this was a two million dollar investment. It was a sign of just how important this hub was to the Empire.

It was strange that Sophia hadn't told the Protectorate. Was it because she didn't trust them to even take action?

I climbed up a drain pipe. I wasn't wearing weighted clothes today; the last thing I needed was to fall through a roof when I didn't need it.

I'd been having to pretend to sit down in chairs while holding myself up in school for weeks now. I'd almost gotten caught when Madison had one of the boys jerk a chair out from under me; I'd had to intentionally fall.

Climbing like a monkey up a drain pipe, I reached the roof of the warehouse. I ran lithely across the roof until I reached the gap. I kept running as stealthily as I could. I knew that there weren't any people in these warehouses because of my Ki sense, but it was always possible they'd have motion sensors.

Attacking where you aren't expected was one of the first rules.

There were guards on the roof. I I called up my Ki as I jumped to the roof of one of the adjacent buildings. That allowed me to land more lightly, landing like a feather on the roof. Otherwise my landing would have echoed inside the metal building.

I moved slowly across and did the same thing to the final building. Landing lightly, I crept across the roof toward the guards, who were peering over the edge of the roof.

Stunning them took only a moment, and a moment later I had them gagged and zip tied.

There was a hatch leading down into the warehouse, but it was locked from the inside. They were undoubtedly expecting someone to come through that doorway, which meant I needed to do something else.

I knew the locations of everyone inside the warehouse, but I didn't have Shadow Stalker's ability to get inside stealthily. That didn't mean I couldn't try, though.

Cautiously I reached down and I began snapping the heads of the nails off with my fingernails. It made more noise than I would have liked, but a quick check didn't show the guards acting like they noticed. One by one I snapped the heads off the nails.

Carefully I lifted the sheet of metal roofing, only to look down and see that there were old shingles underneath, the kind used on houses. I grimaced. Pulling all of this up would be too noisy and would take too long.

There was only one thing I could do.

I punched my fist through the shingles. It reminded me unpleasantly of what it had been like to hit Crusader in the head, but I forced the image from my mind.

I could feel the people underneath responding to the noise, and a moment later bullets ripped through the roof beside me. It didn't matter, though. I tore a hole in the roof, and a moment later I was dropping twenty feet to the floor of the warehouse.

Landing, I saw that there were pallets of boxes everywhere. They were labeled in various ways to disguise what they were, but the important thing was the men who were rushing toward me with guns.

One man had a machine gun mounted on the back of a truck; it was heavy and it was pointed at the overhead doors leading out of the warehouse. I had a feeling that I wouldn't enjoy being shot by those much.

I pointed upwards, and I blasted the lights.

It took a moment for me to hit all of them, a moment where I was dodging gunfire, but once the lights were gone we were plunged into darkness. The hole I had left in the ceiling wasn't enough to provide much light, and in any case their eyes weren't adapted to the darkness.

I didn't need any lights though. Unlike the holodeck simulations, I could actually see their Ki, which meant that they were lit up to me like Christmas lights. That didn't help me with the other objects in the room, which meant that I had to depend on my memory of where everything was, but in a moment it wouldn't matter.

Tossing people against walls was surprisingly effective; I tossed Nazis in the dark. Even if I hadn't been able to see Ki I could have followed them by the flashes of their guns going off. It created a strange strobe effect; I could see them for a fraction of a moment after they fired their guns.

Smashing one of them after the other, I heard some of them groaning as they were hit by their own people. The man with the machine gun was trying to move it around, but a moment later I was up on the truck behind him. I threw him up into the air and a moment later I had the gun.

The overhead doors opened; I wasn't sure whether it was the guards outside or a quick minded guard inside. It didn't matter.

As light from the street lamps outside filled the room, the men facing me froze as they realized that I was behind the machine gun and it was pointed at them.

"I'd throw my guns down and surrender," I called out, my voice altered by Leet's device. "Things might get a little messy otherwise."

Two of the men behind me tried creeping up behind me. Almost negligently I pointed behind me and blasted. I heard a horrible wet gurgling sound and a body hitting the floor.

I also heard a gun hitting the floor as the second man surrendered.

A moment later the others did the same.

"Kick the guns toward me," I said. I watched until they complied.

"The Empire will get you for this!" one of the less intelligent gang members said.

I threw my backpack at the closest man.

Instead of my usual costume, this time it was filled with zip ties.

"Start tying yourselves up. Any man I see cheating will get a Crusader special."

They seemed unusually willing to tie themselves up after that. A moment later I began tying them to each other. I roped them to the vehicle with the machine gun, and after putting it in neutral I shoved it outside.

A moment to regain the two men on the roof and the one man who who seemed to be dead, and I had thirty nine men roped together.

I grabbed a phone from one of them, and switching off the cell phone jammer I dialed the PRT.

"PRT," the woman on the phone said. "How may I help you?"

"I've just captured thirty seven members of the Empire," I said. "And also I'd like to report a fire."

"Who is this?" the woman asked.

"Just call me Hood," I said. "You can trace this phone's location, right?"

She was silent for a moment.

"Yes."

"You should probably bring fire trucks," I said.

I dropped the phone.

"There's no fire," one of the men said.

I ignored them, turning to the warehouse and pulling in my Ki. A moment later I shouted.

"KA...ME...HA...ME...HA!"

A moment later the world turned white. Apparently cocaine dust was highly flammable, and whatever else they had floating around in the warehouse was even worse.

"Shit," one of the men said.

I didn't leave until I heard the sounds of the fire trucks.

One down.


	26. Weapon

It took the fire department three hours to put the fire I had started out, as the fire had spread to two of the other warehouses. I'd left by that time, of course.

The Protectorate put out a statement condemning me for an act of arson and destruction of evidence, and for killing the one man who'd tried to shoot me from behind. Leet gladly responded by putting out footage of the fight in full glory on his channel.

I was of two minds about that; on the one side it probably helped my case with the public. On the other side, the more footage my enemies had of me fighting the better they'd be able to prepare against me.

I'm sure they were all theorizing in their bunkers; the Empire, the Protectorate, the Merchants, even Coil. All of them were looking for ways to kill or contain me.

The shielded drones that Leet had following me around apparently followed me everywhere except the bathroom and my bedroom. I suspected that was more because Leet was worried about child porn charges than out of any real concern for my modesty.

I asked him whether we could use the footage of my being bullied.

Unfortunately, Massachusetts was a two party consent law state. It was a crime to secretly record conversations where both parties weren't aware of the recording. Even video recordings were illegal if sound was included.

Leet got away with his recordings because they were typically recorded from public places and because conversations weren't what was being recorded.

I had no doubt that Emma would gleefully send me to juvie for recording her bullying mew, and I knew that courts were stupid enough to try. I wasn't strong enough yet that I could fight back either. I might be able to win against individual Protectorate capes, but until I was stronger than Alexandria I wouldn't be able to ignore the law.

Not that I was planning to, of course. I was totally law abiding, at least when the laws made sense.

From what Sophia told me at lunch the next day, the Empire was having conniptions about the loss of their distribution hub. They'd stored enough drugs in that one warehouse to supply the entire city for a month; I'd burned up at least a hundred million dollars worth of product.

The bounty on my head was now two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. That would be enough to turn the heads of even some of the Dockworkers, even though most of them were good men. To the scum of Brockton Bay it would be like chumming the waters.

There were reports of people attacking girls in hoodies all over the city. Most of them were likely drug addicts, and I can't imagine what they were thinking. I'd crushed a man's skull with one punch; why would anyone think attacking me was a good idea?

Most of the attacks weren't serious though; if a girl bled red she was immediately left alone. Apparently the Empire had warned those seeking the reward against making false accusations.

Over the next week I staged three more attacks; once was on a brothel, once was a smaller distribution hub, and the last time was on a gambling operation the Empire was running. I actually managed to stuff my backpack full of cash in that case before I burned the rest of it.

Leet deleted that part of the footage, only showing me burning the money.

He and Garrett thought my idea about bleeding them dry was a good idea. Leet set up secret wiretaps on some of the Empire phone lines using invisible drones. It was illegal as hell and would probably mean prison time for all of us, but he erased all the conversations after we listened to them.

What they learned was that there was going to be a weapon shipment over the weekend. The Empire had decided that the weapons they were using weren't enough; they were bringing in heavier weapons in hopes of killing or deterring me.

That seemed like something that I should stop for a lot of reasons. First, there were tinker tech weapons out there that really could kill me, and I didn't particularly care for my chances against even an antitank rocket.

Second, those weapons would be expensive, hurting their pocketbook yet again. Third, taking guns out of the hands of thugs could only be a good thing for the people of Brockton Bay.

I found myself feeling a little anxious. A shipment like this was almost certainly going to be guarded by capes.

My father also agreed to help, and Garrett and Leet agreed to help as well, although they would be in disguise as my henchmen.

I insisted that they not dress up like pop culture characters; doing that would as much as declare their allegiance to me, and that would mean they'd never be able to go out in public without the risk of being attacked.

Instead, Leet had compromised. He'd built two sets of something called Halo armor, but with the outside appearance changed to something generic and black. Hopefully they would blend into the darkness even if their holographic shields failed.

We were all being outfitted with invisibility fields like those covering the drones. Leet warned us that they likely wouldn't survive combat, but if they gave us surprise that would be all that mattered.

Leet was overly cautious, I thought. He had his drones make multiple passes over the proposed route of the weapon shipment, checking for traps and counter-ambushes.

The one thing we hadn't learned was which Capes would be guarding the shipment. Leet and Garrett privately suspected that we'd be facing Hookwolf, Stormtiger and Cricket at the very least.

It was doubtful that even my Kamahameha would do anything to Hookwolf, but fortunately I didn't have to. Leet built me and Dad something he called goblin gliders, and he made both of us spend much of the week practicing riding them.

It was a rush, even in the holodeck. The initial challenge of balancing myself, of controlling my flight by shifts of my weight soon gave way to simple pleasure.

As long as Hookwolf or one of the others didn't damage my glider there would be nothing they could do and I'd be able to get away.

The one factor we had in our favor other than surprise was that we didn't have to beat Hookwolf and the others. All we had to do was destroy the weapons.

The shipment was supposed to arrive at midnight on Friday. We were cautious, arriving early, but not so early that Empire scouts would notice us. The fact that Dad and I could detect Ki made that part easy.

In the area we'd decided to ambush, the street lights had all been shot out. That left everything in darkness, lit only by the lights of the city.

I was crouched down on a flat roof; people lived in apartments below me, but not many; most were squatters who were stealing electricity and water from the city. I didn't like the idea of endangering people, but the Empire hadn't cooperated in choosing their route. This was the best option we had.

Dad was two blocks away; he was actually inside a building, looking down on things. His range sensing Ki was half mine, but that meant that together we could detect things in a three block area. Given that kind of lead time, we would be able to mount an attack with plenty of time to spare.

Garrett and Leet were on the building opposite me. Leet had been incredibly nervous, despite his heavy armor. Garrett on the other hand had seemed cool as a cucumber.

Waiting was the hardest part. Time seemed to stretch out interminably; I knew that Leet was probably playing on his phone or on a HUD inside his helmet or something, anything to reduce the stress. I could have done something like that, but my phone didn't have games.

The money I'd stolen from the Empire was mostly going to go for food; Dad and I had finally decided that all you could eat restaurants no longer made any sense considering that the Empire was staking them out. Dad thought I should be avoiding restaurants altogether.

The night grew colder as we waited. Thirty minutes passed, then an hour. I was starting to think that maybe the information we had gotten was wrong when the tiny speaker in my ear squawked.

"It's time," was all Dad said.

They were coming from the opposite direction we'd thought; we'd thought that I'd be the first one to detect them but had left Dad as a backup.

I felt myself tense. Until I felt the Ki myself there was no way to detect how many Capes they had. If the convoy was too heavily guarded we'd all agreed to abort the operation.

After all, the biggest disaster that could happen would be if Purity and Hookwolf were both in the convoy. Purity could follow us easily and shook us out of the sky and there was no guarantee that I could hit her.

It took almost two minutes before I felt them. There were almost a hundred of them, and at least five of them had the brighter configurations I'd come to associate with Capes.

"Hookwolf, Fenja and Menja," Dad whispered in my ear. "I can't see the others."

I grimaced.

Not knowing who the last two capes were was a problem. Out strategy would be very different depending on who they were.

"Abort?" I heard Leet's voice say. His voice sounded almost pathetically eager.

I thought about it then scowled. "No."

If we gave up every time something unexpected happened, we'd never accomplish anything.

I waited and saw the convoy turn the corner. They were an eclectic group of vehicles; some of them were old and beaten up, others were shining an new. None of them were carrying any kind of Empire emblems.

There were twenty vehicles in all, and I couldn't detect which vehicles had the weapons in them. Ki could only detect life, after all.

It was most likely one of the trucks, but if I'd been planning things I'd have split the weapons among all of the vehicles, That was if any vehicle was lost the damage would be minimal.

It meant that I would have to destroy all of the vehicles. Luckily I wasn't going to have to depend on my own powers for this.

I took a deep breath, and then I switched the goblin glider on with my foot. A moment later I was rising above the roof and dropping down toward the lead car.

Leet had insisted on painting the bombs in my pack like pumpkins, although he wouldn't explain why. Maybe it was a Harry Potter thing.

The bombs were magnetic; the moment they struck a metal surface they would latch on. I dropped down and I could see the lead car braking as I flew over them, dropping bombs as I went.

I was already over the fourth car when the bombs in the first car exploded. Cars were stopping, and the people in the second third and fourth cars were already bailing out.

It didn't matter. I was already moving past them, dropping more bombs even as the bullets began to fly toward me from the people who'd left the vehicles.

We'd chosen this spot because the road was narrow here, with a lot of junk by the side of the road. It made it difficult for the men in the middle of the convoy to move, which made them sitting ducks.

I saw something flash by me and only instinct made me swerve to the side. I saw a missile fly past me and strike a building, lighting the area up with an explosion.

It didn't matter.

I'd already dropped bombs on half the cars, and the ones behind were trying to pull away. I was out of bombs though, but I started pulling in ki and gesturing.

I could see flashes of light up ahead; apparently Dad and Leet and Garrett were attacking the cars in the back.

I hit the tube the man by the side of the road was pointing at me, and it exploded in a shower of sparks. Two more were getting out of their cars, though. They were sighting down at me, and I could feel a third coming up from behind.

I dropped a phosphorous flare, and I closed my eyes.

The world exploded in blinding light, and the men who'd been aiming at me were blinded. One staggered back and a moment later his missile hit one of the cars, turning it into a burning hulk.

I hadn't seen a sign of any of the parahumans, and for a moment I wondered if I'd been mistaken. A moment later I dodged as a giant spear slid toward me.

Fenja and Menja had grown to their full size while I was blinded, and they were now screaming out some sort of challenge as they tried to knock me from the air.

A moment later I lunged toward the ground as a mass of swirling blades came hurling off one of the buildings toward me.

I was out of tricks and outnumbered, and we'd already destroyed at least half the convoy. Part of me wanted to continue fighting, but I knew that would only get me and maybe Dad and Garrett and Leet killed.

"Withdraw," I said into my earpiece as I sent the glider rising higher. Fenja tried to throw her giant spear at me, but dodging it was easy. I felt a sudden sense of elation; we'd gotten away with it!

I could feel Dad and Leet and Garrett moving away in the distance just as planned.

Suddenly the glider dipped. I looked back and I saw smoke; apparently at least some of the bullets had hit, and I was losing altitude quickly.

For a moment I considered calling the others, but I quickly realized that would be stupid. I wasn't going to get Dad or Garrett killed trying to save me.

I was falling faster now, and the glider was starting to spin; a moment later my feet left it and it spun away from me. I gathered my Ki and started to slow my descent. Even with my Ki I suspected that a fall from six hundred feet was going to hurt.

I saw the glider crash on top of one of the cars, but I tried to push myself to the other side of the buildings; I could feel Capes already moving to intercept me.

It didn't matter.

I landed on a flat roof on my feet, leaving a crater in the roof but not breaking through. The shock to my legs was jarring but not overwhelming. The moment I landed I started running, jumping from the roof all the way across the street.

I could hear a roar behind me, and I risked a look back

Hookwolf was on top of the building and he was racing toward me. I didn't know what my top speed was compared to his, but I knew that he didn't have super senses like I did. I could feel him behind me and Fenja and Menja falling farther and farther behind.

He was racing down the side of the building; apparently he couldn't make the jump across the boulevard and knew enough not to try.

There was something else though, something moving with an almost unbelievable speed.

In the darkness it only looked like a patch of fog, but I caught glimpses of something horrible moving underneath. Worse, it's Ki felt strange, almost as though there were two entities inside the fog instead of only one.

Before I could do anything it was moving toward me. I couldn't run, and so I launched myself toward it, hoping that I could take whoever it was out before Hookwolf could reach us.

As I plunged into the fog I caught glimpses of multiple legs. I felt some of them slashing at me, and I felt pain like I hadn't felt in a long time.

I lashed out, but whatever the creature was, it was moving too fast.

Was this the weapon they were transporting?

I could sense it's Ki, but something else was happening. I couldn't breathe suddenly. I gagged even as I punched out, feeling chitin breaking a little under my blow. A moment later I felt several other slashes.

It was like being in a blender; the pain was unbelievable.

It seemed like it lasted forever, even though it was likely less than two minutes. I felt my face hitting the roof, and I could feel blood pooling underneath me.

Darkness came over me.

Waking was almost instantaneous, and strangely I felt no pain. I was stronger now, but as I opened my eyes I saw that I was bound with manacles that were at least six inches thick, held by chains normally used to hold ships.

There were poles on both sides of me, and I was strung up in a standing position. I tested the chains, but they were beyond even my newfound strength.

"Those are brute chains," I heard a familiar voice say to my right.

I looked over to see Sophia strung up with smaller chains.

It took a moment for my eyes to adjust, but finally I could see that we were in the middle of a clearing outside of town. I was bound like the girl from King Kong, and there was already a group of at least a hundred people below me, with more arriving all the time.

We were raised on a wooden dais even though the poles we were attached to were of concrete and driven into the ground. There were torches lighting us, but I could see people setting up lights all around us, and someone was setting up a camera.

"What's going on?"

"Somebody saw me with you at the fire," Sophia said grimly. "So they figured I was important to you. They hit me with a tranquilizer and they plan to make an example of both of us."

"Can you move?" I asked.

With her powers she could phase out of her chains easily, even though it would reveal her identity to the Empire.

She grimaced. "My whole body is numb. I'm just starting to get feeling back in my limbs."

"Why are we even here?"

"I can answer that question," I heard a voice from the other side of me say. Looking over I saw a big man with greasy blonde hair stepping toward me. He was hairy and had a wolf tattoo on his arm.

Hookwolf.

"We're going to make an example of you," he said. "Show the rank and file what happens when someone defies the Empire."

At least Dad and the others had gotten away. There was still a chance that they could track me, either from the speaker in my ear or from the hidden drones.

Hookwolf must have seen the hope on my face because he grinned nastily. "Did you know those drones of yours make plenty of noise for Cricket and Stormtiger to pick up on? We got rid of them and the little earpiece too. Nobody is coming to help you."

I gave the chains another yank, hoping that eve if I couldn't break the chains maybe I could break the poles. No such luck.

He leaned forward. "I suspect you aren't going to enjoy the next few hours very much."


	27. Interlude Sophia 3

Sophia cursed to herself.

Getting caught had been a rookie mistake. She'd gotten complacent, thinking that nobody was after her because she was in her civilian identity.

What was worse, these bozos didn't even know she was Shadow Stalker. They had just kidnapped her because she'd been seen with Hebert at the fire. That meant that she could get out whenever she wanted, and she could likely escape, even if that meant leaving Hebert behind.

Of course, doing so would out her identity to two hundred members of the Empire, with more coming every minute. Many of them had cell phones out, recording what was going on. Sophia had seen pictures like this from the Deep South, where entire families had treated the murder of a human being like a grand entertainment.

If she revealed her identity, then her family would never be safe. The Empire had fingers all over the United states, although no city was dominated like Brockton Bay. Sooner or later some chucklehead would come for them, and odds were that she wouldn't be there to save them.

She blinked.

Hookwolf was speaking.

"He was a good boy, my nephew," he said. "He knew his proper place in the world and he made sure that everyone else knew it too."

Hebert said something in a low voice, and Hookwolf leaned forward. Hebert lunged forward, lightning fast and managed to butt heads with Hookwolf.

He staggered back, and then stared at her. His face was covered in blood. He grinned unpleasantly.

"I didn't think I was going to enjoy this as much as I'm going to, but I will. Don't try to get out; those restraints are made by Toybox, reinforced with force fields and tinker tech. Even if you were as strong as Glory Girl you wouldn't be going anywhere, and you aren't anywhere near her level."

Hebert's body visibly strained, but it was obvious that she wasn't going anywhere.

"I think you'd be surprised how strong I am," Hebert said. "If I'm that weak why don't you let me go and we can fight?"

He chuckled. "You must think I'm an idiot. This isn't some Saturday Morning Matinee; I'm not going to blurt out my evil plan in time for you to save everyone. This is the real world."

Hebert shrugged. She was doing a good job of looking unconcerned, even though she had to know that she was in deep trouble.

"Actually, I am going to tell you what's about to happen," he said. "Because knowing is going to make it so much worse. You killed my nephew and Crusader. You destroyed a hundred million dollars worth of product. If we let you get away with those things, other people are going to get ideas. Other people will think that the way is open to attack the Empire... so we've got to show them what happens to people who get ideas."

"So what, torture?" Hebert asked.

"We'll start with your little friend over there," he said. "And once she's done, we'll start on you."

"I barely know her," Hebert said, barely glancing at Sophia. "Why do you think I'd care if a subhuman gets hurt?"

Sophia stiffened, even though she'd never heard Hebert say a single racist thing, even under tremendous provocation.

"Because you are one of those bleeding hearts who think you are a hero," he said. "Welcome to the real world. There aren't any heroes, just people playing dress up and working for the man."

It made Sophia a little uncomfortable that she actually agreed with Hookwolf on anything.

"In the real world people have choices, and you can either be on the top, or you can be dirt under someone's foot. The Empire is all stands between people like her and your family."

He gestured toward Sophia.

"Do you think she really cares about you? She'd betray you in a minute to save her own skin," he shook his head. "They don't understand loyalty or honor; all they want is to satisfy their primal urges, which is why they are outbreeding the white race into extinction."

"Do you really believe all this crap?" Hebert asked. "You don't even know her; it's possible that she really is like that, but you don't think Blacks or the ABB care about their families?"

Hebert was barking up the wrong tree, trying to debate a racists. Or maybe she was trying to stall, hoping that her partner would be able to find and rescue her. Sophia didn't think that was going to be happening anytime soon.

After all, the whole roster of Empire capes was here, including a couple that she didn't even recognize.

"It doesn't matter," Hookwolf said. "The main event starts in five minutes."

Five minutes before Sophia had to reveal her secret to the world. She felt numb. She wouldn't have thought it mattered that much. Her mother hadn't ever protected her and her sister wasn't strong at all; still, they were all that she had.

"You know your nephew went down like a bitch," Hebert said. "Crying like the weakling that he is."

"You are trying to get me to torture you instead of her," Hookwolf said. He stared at her for a long moment. "I'll tell you what; we won't start on her until you give us permission."

Hebert looked surprised.

"Pain has a way of making people give up on their ideals," he said. "With enough pain people would sell out their own mothers. When you are watching your friend being tortured, I want you to know it's your fault."

As he turned to walk away, he looked back at them and said, "You shouldn't have fucked with the Empire, bitch."

A moment later he was gone, moving to talk with some of the other Capes.

Hebert turned to Sophia.

"Get out when you can," she said. "I'll try to keep them occupied."

Somehow Sophia doubted that Hebert would be able to last very long. She probably thought that just because she was a brute that she'd be able to take the pain, but the Empire knew how to torture people. It usually wasn't done so publicly, but they were doing it to make a point.

Maybe Hebert was hoping that Sophia would be able to get out in time to call for help. However, they were far enough outside the city that the only way that would happen was if she managed to take a cell phone from one of the drooling yokels in the audience. If she had to wait until she got into town Hebert would be long dead.

"Worry about yourself, Hebert," Sophia said.

The Protectorate would be looking for her; she was missing her shift at work. However, Sophia didn't think any of them were smart enough to find their own ass, much less track down a missing girl a few hours after they realized she was gone.

Sophia tightened her fist. Sensation was returning to her arms and legs. If Hebert could hold out long enough there was a chance that she'd be able to get away.

The next four minutes were filled with uncomfortable silence between the two of them. There was a lot Sophia wanted to say. She wanted to curse at Hebert for getting them into all of this, to rail at her, but what good would it do? Hebert was about to get all the punishment she deserved and more.

Finally Hookwolf stood on the stage.

"Welcome, brothers," he said into a microphone. "You all know why we are here today... to show the world what happens when you kill one of the Empire. We protect our own, and if we can't, then we avenge them."

There was a rumble of agreement from the crowd, which had grown to three hundred people.

"I've heard whispers from people," Hookwolf said. "Traitorous whispers that we were losing our grip... that if a teenage girl could slip our grasp, then maybe we aren't as in control as we thought we were."

Men in the crowd were booing.

It wasn't that Hookwolf was a powerful speaker; it was simply that the crowd was easily lead.

They were sheep, Sophia thought disgustedly, led around by a dog that was leading them to the slaughter. He didn't care about the non-capes any more than Sophia did. Making them think he did was just a way to keep their loyalty.

"This girl thought she could defy the Empire, murder its people, maim them and get away with it. Tonight we prove her wrong!"

There were isolated cheers from the crowd, but probably not as many as Hookwolf had expected. There was an uneasy look on a lot of people's faces, one that Sophia could understand.

Killing someone was easy, and sometimes necessary. Torture was something else, especially for those Nazis who were only paying lip service to the cause. The hard core converts wouldn't have a problem with it, but not all Nazis were the same. Some were simply weaklings who had joined because they were afraid of the ABB or the Merchants.

"First up is our own Rune!"

The girl stepped up to the stage hesitantly, looking as though she'd rather be any place else.

Hookwolf leaned toward her and whispered something in her ear. She stiffened, and then slowly nodded.

"Break her," he said.

A moment later pieces of concrete rose from behind Rune. Presumably she'd already traced her sigil on them.

One of the pieces slammed forward, hitting Hebert in the knee with an audible crack. She screamed a short, agonizing scream. The piece of concrete shattered as it hit her knee though. A moment later Rune did her other knee.

Hookwolf helpfully began to bring pieces of the concrete up to the stage. Rune bent down and touched each one a moment before it shot forward. With each scream from Hebert she looked more and more sick.

Hebert was struck in the arms and the legs, in the ribs and the pelvis... the only place that was spared was her head.

Over and over again she was hit, until Sophia began to doubt that she had any bones left that were unbroken.

Hookwolf leaned toward her. "Maybe you could use a break. Maybe your friend could take a turn."

Sophia froze. Her arms and legs weren't completely back to normal. It would be hard for her to get away.

Hebert shook her head.

"You don't look like you have a lot left in the tank," he said. "Maybe you think you'll die soon. We aren't that kind."

He gestured, and Othala stepped onto the stage. She reached out and touched Hebert, who grimaced as her bones began to snap back into place.

"We can do this all night," Hookwolf said. "It's going to go on and on and on. Are you sure you don't want a break?"

Hebert flexed her arms, and still the manacles held.

She shook her head.

"Purity is next," Hookwolf said.

Rune left the stage and ran around behind it. Sophia could hear the sound of retching.

Purity looked hesitantly.

"She deserves this," Hookwolf said to her, the microphone shut off. "You think she wouldn't have killed Max or Theo? Think of it as putting a mad dog down."

She grimaced, and a moment later beams of light flashed out, striking Hebert in the ribs and tearing flesh away. She screamed, and Sophia could smell burning flesh.

The Protectorate thought Purity was weaker without available light, but Sophia couldn't see how that could be true.

The light flashed over and over again, and Hebert's screams worsened.

Sophia found herself looking away. Why wasn't Herbert begging to let Sophia take the pain? She had to know that Sophia wouldn't let herself be tortured like that. Was she worried that the anesthetic was still affecting Sophia?

Or was it something else?

Hebert had to know what revealing Sophia's identity would do her family. Was she doing it for Sophia's mother and sister?

When Purity was done, Hebert was unconscious. Othala had to heal her again before she could respond.

"Maybe your friend should be taking this instead of you."

Hebert shook her head.

Kaiser was next.

He created blades that pierced her, every one excruciatingly painful. By the time he was done, Hebert looked like a pincushion.

"Are you ready for a break?" Hookwolf asked, looking significantly at Sophia.

Hebert shook her head.

How could she take this kind of punishment? It didn't make sense to Sophia. Why would she do something like this for someone who had only tortured her, who had stolen her best friend, who had made her life a living hell?

She was supposed to be the weak one, but Sophia knew that she would never have been able to survive even the first round of torture, much less three.

Stormtiger slashed away at her body, cut after cut, again and again. It took longer than it should have for Hebert to fall unconscious, and there was a growing pool of blood underneath her.

"This can all end," Hookwolf said. "For at least a little while. I'll make you a deal. If you let your little friend take her share, then next time we'll let you die."

Hebert shook her head.

Sophia wanted to scream at her. She could make it all end; all she had to do was say yes.

Why would she do this? It didn't make sense. She didn't owe anything to Sophia. It would have made more sense for her to have let Sophia be tortured first, back when her arms and legs were still numb and she couldn't have gotten away.

She looked up.

It was dark in the city, with skies overcast, concealing the stars. While it felt like it had been an eternity, in reality it had only been thirty minutes.

The torture sessions were lasting longer and longer though. It was taking more and more for Hebert to fall unconscious. Was it possible to get used to pain?

Fenja and Menja were next. They began slamming their spears into Hebert, although they didn't seem particularly enthusiastic about it. They seemed to struggle sometimes as they slammed the spears into Hebert.

After they were done, Hookwolf asked his question again. By this point, even he was starting to look impressed.

"You know we're going to kill her too, no matter what happens. What difference does it make if it's before or after you are dead? At least this way you'll get some relief."

Hebert shook her head.

The two capes that Sophia didn't know were next. Sophia couldn't see what was going on inside the cloud, but the sounds from inside were sickening. When they finally stepped away, Hebert looked like hamburger that had been put in a blender.

"Now?" Hookwolf asked.

He was starting to look a little frustrated.

They were running out of Capes that could do anything creative to Hebert. Viktor could steal skills, but it was doubtful that Hebert had anything he didn't already have. Alabaster was just a normal man who couldn't be killed. Othala couldn't do any damage that a normal person couldn't.

Krieg was next.

He settled for simply punching Hebert, over and over and over, each punch packed with enough Kinetic energy to detroy a truck. She grunted, but didn't scream. It took an eternity before the first rib broke. By the time it was over, Krieg looked exhausted.

By this point, Sophia was past the point of questioning why. All she could feel was numbness. This couldn't be happening.

"This is the last time I'm going to ask you," Hookwolf said. "The last opportunity you'll have. If you let her take some of this, I'll give you a thirty minute break, thirty minutes free of pain. Wouldn't that be nice?"

Hebert shook her head, tightening her arms. Sophia almost thought she could hear the pillars on both sides of her groan. They weren't really made of concrete; they had to be some sort of tinker tech material to have withstood everything Hebert had gone through.

Krieg was gasping for air, bent over.

He stood suddenly.

"Hey, did this bitch always have a tail?"

Hebert gave a startled laugh, her voice sounding deeper than it had before as she spoke. She was staring at the sky.

"You shouldn't have done this. You really, really shouldn't have done this."

She was staring at something; it took Sophia a moment to realize that it was the moon, hanging low on the horizon. It was rising late at this part of the year.

"But I guess it was always going to come to this."

Her voice was getting deeper and deeper. The manacles on her arms were groaning.

Hookwolf took a step back. He was staring at Hebert.

It took Sophia a moment to realize that she was sprouting hair all over her body. The metal on her arms was screaming and a moment later they shattered.

Hebert was growing larger and larger.

Hookwolf was gearing up, the metal of his body spinning and spinning.

Sophia phased out of her manacles; nobody was looking at her right now, and she suspected that no one would notice that she was gone.

Hebert was looking more and more like some kind of Endbringer. Was this how the other Endbringers had been created.

At thirty feet tall she roared, the sound of her roar so loud that it hurt Sophia's ears. She opened her mouth, and there was an explosion of light.

Hookwolf vanished in an explosion. Sophia could see an outline of his skeleton for a moment before it vanished in an explosion of heat and light.

The monster that had been Hebert turned to stare at Sophia, and there wasn't any remnant of anything human in those eyes. The monster screamed again, and it opened its mouth again.

Sophia ran.


	28. Interlude Sophia 4

Sophia crawled behind the stage.

Hebert had continued growing, and she was now fifty feet tall. Sophia doubted that she would have gotten away if Fenja and Menja hadn't attacked, distracting the monster.

Sophia froze as she saw a cowled figure crouched on the ground behind the stage. There was an acrid smell of bile and vomit. Rune looked up at Sophia, her face as white as a ghost.

Sophia stared at her for a moment. Part of her wanted to throw the Nazi out to be killed by the ape, but any traces of movement might turn the monster in her direction. After all, she was one of those who had tortured Hebert, driving her crazy in the first place.

She held one finger up to her lips.

Rune stared at her, then slowly nodded, barely moving.

Something flew over the back of the stage, landing two feet to Sophia's left. It was a severed arm, ten feet long at least, and still gripping an equally long sword.

Rune gave out a startled yelp, and Sophia surged forward. She rolled over the other girl, putting her arm around her neck.

"You are not going to get me killed," Sophia hissed in her ear. "Make another sound and I'll choke you out. If the ape finds us, you're going first."

Rune nodded frantically.

The girl was younger than Sophia had thought, maybe twelve or thirteen. She was almost as young as Vista; had the Empire forced her to work for them, or had she volunteered? She certainly wasn't out their fighting at the moment.

Whatever happened, her future with the Empire was over. The Nazis had long memories, and the thought that she'd leave her comrades to die wouldn't sit well with any of them.

The smell of burning flesh suddenly filled Sophia's nostrils. She could hear the sounds of gunfire like popcorn, and she slid further to Rune's left. It'd be ironic to be killed by a stray shot, and not by the magic monkey at all.

The fact that the guns were likely pointed up meant that bullets were going to come raining down.

"We need a shield," she whispered in the girl's ear. "Or we're going to be filled with lead."

Rune was quiet for a moment, then reached out under the stage. There were oversized tires underneath the podium, the kind used for tractors. They had apparently been used for the base of the parts of the stage that the Nazis had been standing on.

She moved her fingers over the tire, and a moment later it ripped away from the stage with an audible groan. Sophia grimaced, but the tire moved to cover them just moments before some things began to ping against the metallic inside of the tire.

Sophia heard something landing on the tire that was floating six inches over their bodies. A moment later she felt a liquid dripping on her face; it took her a moment to reach up and touch it. Her hand came away from her face red.

Was it raining blood?

Rune looked like she wanted to scream, but a glance at Sophia kept her silent. Sophia carefully looked up; she could see an eye peering at her through the holes in the tire.

Rune did something, and the tire spun above them, throwing whatever it was off.

The top half of Viktor's body landed with a squelch ten feet away. This time Sophia was the one who stifled a scream.

The gunfire was lessening; it made sense, since Hebert had already been bulletproof before she turned into a fifty foot tall rage monster.

The smell was getting worse, though.

For the next five minutes, Sophia and Rune huddled, listening to sounds that Sophia would remember for the rest of her life. Both of them barely breathed, afraid of drawing the attention of the thing on the other side of the stage.

Sophia found herself gripping Rune's arms tightly, and the Nazi didn't complain. She simply pressed her face into the ground and crouched in on herself.

If the ape did find them, Rune would pretend to be dead. Sophia didn't know if that would be enough to keep it from attacking, especially if it recognized her.

Sophia would run; it was better to die on her feet at least.

Everything grew quiet, the sounds of roaring in the distance growing fainter and fainter.

Sophia hesitated, but started to pull away. She would go shadow when she turned the corner of the stage and if it was a trick she'd run. She didn't think the monster was the kind to play tricks though.

She started to move back, and she felt Rune's hand on her arm, shaking her head frantically.

"I've got to go check," Sophia whispered in the girl's ear. "Don't be a little bitch."

She pulled away from the girl and Rune lifted the tire high enough that she could crawl out from under it. She crouched down unconsciously as she made her way toward the side of the stage, even though the stage was taller than she was. Once she reached the side of the stage, she peered around the corner. A moment later she fought the urge to vomit.

The monster had shoved Kaiser onto his own blades. She'd ripped the arms off Fenja and Menja.

Sophia couldn't even recognize some of the capes, those who hadn't been disintegrated entirely. There were body parts everywhere, including a bloody mask here and what looked like a brain simply lying on the ground. Sophia's eyes followed the trail of blood leading to the brain, and that was what made her want to hurl.

There were dozens of burned corpses out where the audience had once been, and Sophia could see beams of light and the silhouette of the ape in the distance.

It was following the members of the Empire, who were escaping in their vehicles. Every few seconds it was blasting another vehicle out of existence. Sometimes it would stomp on a vehicle or grab one and throw it into the air.

Mostly though it was burning them to death.

The idiots were heading straight for Brockton Bay. They didn't even have the guts to make their deaths mean something?

Didn't they realize what leading her straight into the city meant?

She felt someone move behind her, and she realized it was Rune. The girl looked white as a ghost.

"Give me your phone," Sophia said, speaking in a normal voice for the first time.

She stared at her, not moving.

"Do you have family in that town? Friends? Anybody you don't want to be burned to death or eaten by a giant fucking monkey?" Sophia asked.

Rune handed her the phone, after slipping her thumb over the lock.

Sophia dialed the PRT.

"PRT," the voice said. "How may I direct your call?"

"This is Sophia Hess," Sophia said.

"Redirecting you to console," the voice said.

"Wait, no," Sophia said, but it was too late. She needed to talk to Armsmaster, not one of the Kiddies, especially since they'd gotten a couple of newbies in. Although Sophia detested her, she hoped she got Vista, because at least she tried to be professional.

"Console," she heard on the other end of the line, and she groaned.

Clockblocker the clown. He'd only been working for the Wards for less than a week, and they already had him on console.

"Get me Armsmaster!" she snapped. "This is an emergency!"

"This about you running out on your shift?" He asked. "Because it was a major bummer having to cover for..."

"The Empire just spent the last hour and a half torturing the Hood," Sophia said. "She second triggered, and now she's turned into a giant fucking monkey. She just killed most of the Empire."

"This is a joke, right?" Clockblocker asked weakly.

"Do I sound like I'm joking? Imagine a combination of King Kong and Godzilla, and that's what we're looking at. She's fifty feet tall and she ripped Fenja's arms off."

He was silent for a long moment.

"Fine," Sophia said. She held up Rune's phone and she clicked the camera. A moment later she sent the image to Clockblocker's phone.

She'd thought being forced to learn each other's personal numbers had been a waste of time, but it had been designed for situations just like this, and for times when the PRT iteself might be compromised.

A moment later she heard Clockblocker's phone buzz. A moment after that she heard the sound of retching.

"Armsmaster here," a voice broke in.

"I was kidnapped at my school by the Empire because they saw me with the Hood at the fire," Sophia said. "They just spent the last hour and a half torturing her to the point that she second triggered. Now she's... I don't know. Something like an Endbringer, a giant monkey that can fire beams strong enough to vaporize Hookwolf and able to rip Fenja's arms off with her bare hands."

"The Hood hasn't shown any aggression toward people who aren't villains."

"I don't think she's in her right mind. She tried to kill me after spending an hour and a half letting herself be tortured rather than see me be tortured."

There was no hesitation in Armsmaster's voice.

The fact that she'd told him that a giant monkey was about to attack the city hadn't phased him in the least.

"Threat assessment?"

"Have Clockblocker send you the photo I sent," she said. "And you tell me what threat level you think she is."

"Where are you at?"

"About ten miles northwest of town," Sophia said.

"And the Hood?"

"She's chasing cars full of Empire toward the city."

"I'm not sure that we will be able to redirect resources to retrieve you," Armsmaster said.

Even from ten miles away Sophia could hear the sounds of Endbringer alarms beginning to ring out, although it could be in part because they were coming from the phone.

"I think I'll hitch a ride with Rune," Sophia said, smiling unpleasantly.

"You have Rune?" Armsmaster asked.

"She's got people in the city too," Sophia said. "And I don't think she's going to argue too hard."

Rune was staring into the distance, shaking her head. The ape was only visible now as flashes of light in the distance, more than three miles away and over the horizon. The only reason that Sophia knew the city was there at all was from the glow of the lights in the sky.

"Besides, the Empire just lost most of their Capes, and the ones who are left won't appreciate her hiding much," Sophia said. "She'd be better off siding with us."

Working with a Nazi was the last thing Sophia would have ever thought she would be doing, but the girl looked scared enough to do whatever Sophia said, and that was going to be useful. Plus, even if the girl did end up in the Wards, it would mean that she owed Sophia, owed a black girl.

She'd have to look at Sophia ever day and realize that one of the "lesser races" had saved her life. Seeing that in her eyes every day might be worth the annoyance of having to work with a racist.

"Is there anything else you can tell us?"

"The Hood is Taylor Hebert," Sophia said. "You need to contact her Dad; maybe he can bring her back to her senses."

Rune stared at her, shocked, but Sophia didn't care. If calling Hebert's dad saved people's lives, then it would be worth giving her identity away to the Protectorate. Even if he wasn't able to talk her down, he might know of a weakness that Sophia didn't know.

Sophia closed the phone and handed it back to Rune.

"I'm not going there," Rune said, shaking her head violently.

"What do you think is going to happen when that ape hits town?"

"It's going to wipe out the Merchants," Rune said. "That's where the trainyards are."

"Then what?"

"Uh, it could hit the Docks and fight Lung."

"If it turns only a little to the right it'll end up wiping out the Boardwalk and Arcadia, you know, places where all the white people live."

Rune froze, then cursed.

She grabbed her phone and dialed.

She listened and grimaced; apparently no one was picking up.

She reached over and touched the stage, and spent several seconds touching it. A moment later, a piece of it closest to them ripped away and as Rune stepped back, it dropped to the ground.

"How do you order the Protectorate around?" Rune asked, staring at her.

"My Dad is a big deal in the PRT," Sophia lied as she stepped onto the platform. "I'd say you kidnapped the wrong girl but clearly I'm not the monkey you should have been worrying about."

Rune winced, then gestured as the platform rose.

"Can't take a little of what you people say every day to me?" Sophia asked. "At least when I don't hand them their teeth?"

"You don't know what it was like," Rune muttered. "I thought it would be cool. My parents tried to get away, but I wouldn't listen."

"So you tortured a girl into being an Endbringer. What is that, a normal Saturday for you? Something you do instead of catching a movie? If you'll do that to a white girl, what the hell have you been doing to the Blacks and the Asians?"

Rune shook her head.

"Hookwolf made me."

"Just following orders? I think the Nazis tried that excuse the first time around, and it didn't work out too well for them."

"He said he'd kill my family," Rune said. She looked away. "He'd have done it too. Some of the Capes in the Empire pretended to be nice, and others were weird and scary, like those new capes. He liked seeing dogs die, got off on it. He liked seeing nig...I mean other races die even more."

Sophia clenched her fist.

"And you watched him do it?"

"He was big on making demonstrations, thought that if people were afraid enough they'd never betray him or the Empire. It worked."

The battlefield was vanishing behind them.

"Yeah," Sophia said. "Look how well it worked for him. He thought if he was the biggest monkey in the room everybody would do anything he said."

Hookwolf had been an idiot. If he'd been secure in the loyalty of his men, he wouldn't have had to go out for gruesome displays. He'd been afraid of betrayal, probably afraid of a lot of things. He'd probably turned that fear into anger. He'd taken it out on people who couldn't defend themselves, which ultimately made him a coward.

That seemed uncomfortably familiar somehow, although Sophia wasn't quite sure why.

She leaned forward and Rune flinched. The platform dipped beneath them.

"That's the thing," Sophia said. "There's always a bigger monkey. Even for the Endbringers. I guess maybe not for Scion, but he's hardly even human."

They were both silent after that, following the road back into town. Huge sections of the road had been turned into rubble, and here and there Sophia could see crushed cars as well as smell the smell of burning flesh and metal in places where Hebert had completely vaporized cars and their occupants.

"What happens if we run into her?' Rune asked in a small voice.

"We should see her before she sees us," Sophia said. "And we'll go around to join the Protectorate."

"And then?"

"We're going to have to distract her long enough for people to get to the Endbringer shelters," Sophia said. "Kill her if we have to, or calm her down if we can."

"I... don't know if I can do that. You saw what she did to the others, the ones that..."

"You mean how she killed most of them the same way they hurt her?" Sophia said. "Yeah. Maybe that means that she remembers something from her old life, or maybe it was just lucky. She just plain murdered some of them."

"She's going to come after me," Rune said. She hunched in on herself.

"Well, maybe you deserve it," Sophia said. "But do your friends at school? Do the people in your family?"

Rune shook her head.

"Then man up and grow some balls. Would you rather die having saved some lives, or just plain die?"

"I'd rather not die," Rune muttered.

"What do you think is going to happen after all this?" Sophia asked. "If there's members of the Empire left, they'll know you hid, and they'll find you and your family, and you've seen the kind of crap they do to people."

"I'm a cape," Rune said.

"And if they cut off your fingers?" Sophia asked. "Plus, I'm pretty sure that at least some of the yokels out in the audience posted on some of those of those websites you guys think the Protectorate doesn't know about. You know what the law says about unintended consequences of a crime?"

"You're responsible?" Rune asked in a small voice.

"Right. If you rob a house with three friends, and they all get shot to death, you'll get charged for their murder even if you didn't do it. So what do you think will happen if you torture a girl into turning into a giant monkey and she ends up killing two or three hundred people... or two or three hundred thousand?"

"I could go work with a gang in another city," Rune said faintly.

"You'd be too hot," Sophia said. "Only way you can get away from the whole Protectorate is if you are so strong that they don't dare fight you, or so slippery they can't find you. Even the Slaughterhouse is always on the run."

"So what do I do?"

Sophia paused dramatically.

"The Protectorate is corrupt as crap," she said. "If you help with something like this, they might let you in as a probationary Ward, maybe put you and your family up in another city in Witness Protection."

Unless Hebert had wiped out the entire Empire, they probably wouldn't post her in the Bay. With any luck maybe they'd put her on the walls of Ellis burg, where at least she'd be a little useful.

There were lights up ahead, and it took Sophia a moment to realize that it was an old baseball stadium. Someone had restored the lights, and there were PRT trucks everywhere.

As they landed near the edge of the stadium, she saw guns pointed at her.

"Endbringer truce!" she called out.

Rune stepped hesitantly behind her, and a moment later one of the PRT agents recognized her and said something muffled into her helmet. A moment later they all lowered their guns.

Armsmaster stepped forward.

"We're putting up a tent where we can talk strategy," he said. He looked behind her at Rune and he nodded curtly. "They are flying Hebert and her trainer in; they should be here shortly."

"Has she reached the city yet?"

He shook his head. "We've got Velocity trying to distract her, but he says she's fast for her size, and if he keeps it up sooner or later he's going to be vaporized."

Crap, Sophia thought.

Hopefully Hebert's old man would have something helpful to say, because otherwise the city was about to become a bloodbath.


	29. Giant

Hebert's dad looked rumpled. He was balding and lanky, but Sophia could see hints of muscle under his clothes. He looked as though he hadn't slept in a couple of days. He came with an escort of PRT agents who almost threw him into the tent where the rest of them had gathered.

"What's this all about?" he asked.

Armsmaster looked toward Sophia, who scowled. Telling a father that his daughter had been tortured multiple times was hard enough without telling that she'd turned into a fifty foot monkey.

"The Empire caught Taylor tonight," Sophia said carefully.

She was in costume now, brought by a helpful PRT agent, which made her feel a little more confident in facing this man.

"It didn't go well for the Empire I gather," Mr. Hebert asked.

It was surprising how calm he was. Most fathers would have been panicked, worried about their daughters health or their sanity. He was as cool as a cucumber.

"They tortured her and healed her several times," Sophia said. The way he was responding bothered her. Didn't he care about his daughter?

"They used Othala?" Mr. Hebert asked, leaning forward intently. It was like the fact that she'd been tortured hadn't even registered.

She nodded.

"How many times did they heal her?" he asked.

"Seven," Sophia said.

He paled. "She grew a tail, didn't she? That's why the Endbringer alarms are ringing."

Sophia froze.

He'd _known_ she would turn into a giant monkey? She could see the same realization on the faces of the others.

"Where is she?" he asked.

"Outside of town being distracted by Velocity," Armsmaster said. "But he's already getting tired."

"Crap."

"You seem to have known this was going to happen. How is that?"

"I've got the same powers she has," Mr. Hebert said. At the sounds of surprise from the people in the room he hesitated. He glanced around at everyone. "More or less."

"And what powers are those?"

"Essentially we're Crawler without the regeneration," he said. "We get stronger whenever we heal from damage, even if it's just from lifting weights. Being healed from almost dying gives us the biggest boost though."

"How much of a boost is that?" Armsmaster asked.

"It varies from a number of factors... you can understand why I wasn't too enthusiastic about experimenting too much with it. Sometimes more, sometimes less, but maybe twice as powerful on average."

"So she's more than a hundred times as powerful as she was when she started."

"Maybe more," Mr. Hebert said. "Worse, the monkey form is ten times as powerful as the base form."

"So the monkey is a thousand times as powerful as your daughter was yesterday," Armsmaster said. "So just how strong was she yesterday."

"She could lift something like a ton and a half over her head yesterday," Hebert's dad said.

Everyone in the room shifted uneasily. Lifting fifteen hundred or two thousand tons wasn't Alexandria level, but it was enough to wipe out any of the local capes easily. It was probably why the ape had been able to tear through the Empire like they were tissue paper.

"And this applies to her toughness, and whatever energy beams she can project?" Armsmaster asked intently.

Mr. Hebert nodded. "She was getting lightly bruised by Browning 50 caliber rounds recently. Now? I'm not sure that tank rounds would do much more than annoy her."

The Empire didn't use Browning rounds; Sophia wondered how her father knew about her limits so specifically. She remembered the bruising all over Hebert's body. Had her father been toughening her up by shooting at her?

She could see the same question in the eyes of some of the older Protectorate members, but no one bothered asking. There were more important things that had to be dealt with. Hebert was sounding more and more like a mini-Endbringer. Sophia wasn't sure how they'd be able to kill her, much less stop her without seriously injuring her.

"So it's not sounding like very many of us are going to be very useful in this fight," Assault said uneasily. "Except maybe as a distraction."

"The problem with that is that she's not going to be much slower as a monkey despite her increased size and weight... and she was in the low superhuman level of reaction speed before," Mr. Hebert said. "It's not going to be easy dodging her."

"How do you know about this monkey form? Did it happen before?" Battery asked. "Why haven't we heard about it?"

"Ten times as strong as a baseline human strength is just about as strong as a regular gorilla," Mr. Hebert said. "When it happened before handling it wasn't that hard."

"How did you handle it before?" Armsmaster pressed.

"If you remove the tail you revert to normal," Mr Hebert said. "If the moon goes down, you revert to normal. I assume that if you are dead you revert back to normal. Otherwise you're out of luck."

"Why not fight her at all?" Assault asked. "If everybody just heads to the Endbringer shelters and she doesn't find anybody, won't she get bored and wander off?"

"That might work," Mr. Hebert said thoughtfully. "If everyone would do that. What are the odds that there aren't some Merchants or ABB out in the town right now, though?"

Everyone stared at each other, but no one argued the point.

He shook his head. "Besides, there's still four hours left until sunrise, and there would be a chance she'd wander south toward Boston. We don't have a choice but to attack her here."

Sophia was surprised to hear Hebert's father telling everyone that they had to attack and possibly kill his only daughter. He wasn't even hesitating. Didn't he care what happened to her?

"Taylor and I can sense life energy," he said. "I can sense it in a block radius around me; Taylor can... could sense it twice that distance. I'm not sure if the monkey can use that or not, because you don't remember what happened when you are the monkey. If it can, then it can detect the life signs of everything in a three hundred and forty mile radius. Nobody will be safe."

"Can't you just talk her down?" Sophia asked.

Mr. Hebert stared at her for a moment before shaking his head. "Right now she is the ultimate predator; rage incarnate. She would murder her best friend without thinking about it, even though in her normal life she is the sweetest girl who wouldn't hurt anyone unless she was protecting someone else."

"It doesn't sound like taking her down with be easy," Armsmaster said.

"Alexandria could do it," Mr. Hebert said. "Legend might. Eidolon could probably make her go to sleep or something. Out of the heroes here, I doubt anyone other than Miss Militia could actually damage her, unless Armsmaster has some kind of miraculous blade that will cut through anything in that Halberd."

Armsmaster looked thoughtful. "I've been thinking of designing something like that, for Endbringer fights."

"It would have been helpful for right now," Mr. Hebert said. He scowled.

"I could take the shot," Miss Militia said, her hand flexing at her side. "At her size I doubt I'd miss."

Mr. Hebert shook his head. "You'd be surprised at how nimble she is; if she knows you are there there's a good chance she'll get out of the way, and if she blasts you... I have no way of knowing what that would do."

"She vaporized Hookwolf," Sophia volunteered. Despite the fact that this was deathly serious, she enjoyed rubbing things in to the people who had trapped her. "There wasn't even a skeleton left when she was done."

"So even if you killed her, you'd probably be dead before she hit the ground," Mr. Hebert said. "Triumph could probably distract her with his sonic abilities, but it would just make her more angry and he'd be dead a little bit later."

"I could freeze her," Clockblocker said. He was trembling a little bit as he said it, but to his credit he hadn't sat back and hid. It made Sophia think better of him... a little.

"For how long?" Mr. Hebert asked.

"Thirty seconds to ten minutes," he said. "But I can't control how long."

"And you have to be close enough to touch her.," Mr. Hebert said. "That's going to be tough."

"I can help with that," Vista said. "I can warp space around her, bend her energy blasts, maybe get Clock close enough to her to do something."

Gallant stepped forward. "And maybe I can use my powers to calm her down."

"Maybe we could glue me to the back of her leg so she wouldn't notice me," Clockblocker joked weakly. "And I can just keep dosing her for the next four hours."

To Sophia's shock, the adults in the room actually seemed to consider the idea.

Armsmaster nodded. "Vista will be on point with this. She will protect Miss Militia, who will attempt to use whatever weapons she can to destroy the tail. If she can get Clockblocker close enough to Miss Hebert without too much risk, then she'll do so. Gallant will stay close to Vista and Miss Militia and will try to use his abilities on her... in fact we should try to calm her before we try any other attacks."

"And the rest of us?" Assault asked. "Are we really going to let the kiddie brigade do the fighting for us?"

"Their power sets are better for what we are dealing with," Armsmaster said. "My suggestion would be to pull the PRT back and to stay as close to Vista as possible so that she has to protect the smallest area as possible."

"If we stay in one place she'll get you," Mr. Hebert said. "We'll have to keep moving. If we can lead her away from the city that'll be the best for everyone."

"I'd like to bring a couple of consultants in to help," Mr. Hebert said. "They're people Taylor knows. One of them is a tinker who can build pretty much anything."

"What?" Armsmaster's head snapped around.

"They might be able to help distract her at least." he said.

"We're not turning any help away," Miss Militia said firmly. "I'd rather not have to kill a teenage girl who let herself be tortured instead of hurting a friend."

A friend?

Sophia wasn't even that, really. Had Hebert really done it for her and her family, or had she simply been banking on the idea that if she was tortured long enough she'd get strong enough to break free?

Even if that was true, she'd refused to let Sophia be tortured first. That had to mean something. If Sophia had been in her place, she might have let the Nazis give the person who'd caused her so many problems a little pain before distracting them.

"Are we going to have to get them up to speed?" Armsmaster asked.

There was a shimmer in the air from behind Mr. Hebert, and something that looked like the Millenium Falcon appeared. Armsmaster had already snapped his Halberd toward it when a voice came from a speaker on the thing.

"We've been listening in, just in case you guys tried to kidnap our good friend here. We'll do everything we can to help."

The voice was familiar. Sophia frowned.

Was it the idiots that had dressed up like Mario and Luigi? They'd been annoying as hell, even if they'd been pretty good at getting away.

Armsmaster stiffened.

"We're out of time. Velocity says that she's gotten tired of chasing him and she's heading back toward the city."

"I'm going," Mr. Hebert said.

Armsmaster didn't argue. After all, they were going to need all the help they could get.

* * *

The edge of town consisted largely of condemned buildings and warehouses that had been allowed to go back to nature. Grass overgrew everything, and as Vista warped them to the location that Dragon's satellites had indicated, they saw truck with monstrous wheels pull out in front of the monkey.

"Is that your friend?" Sophia asked Mr. Hebert.

He shook his head.

A voice came from the vehicle, which Sophia saw had several people hanging off the sides. They were firing guns.

A loudspeaker on the vehicle played some kind of music Sophia hadn't heard before, and then she heard a slurred voice come on.

"THIS IS OUR TURF, YOU BANANA EATING, SHIT FLINGING, BUTT SNIFFING..."

The Ape leapt, and before Vista or anyone could do anything, it was on top of the vehicle. It grabbed the truck and it smashed it into the ground over and over again. One man managed to leap free as she was grabbing the truck.

Almost contemptously, the ape tossed one of the wheels toward the man, hitting him, and leaving nothing more than a trail of blood.

It turned toward them, and a moment later Sophia was blinded as light that was brighter than the sun came their way. A deafening sound of an explosion came to their right, and Sophia realized that Vista had deflected whatever beam she was sending in their direction.

A warehouse was simply gone; all that was left was a crater.

"We have to keep moving," Vista said. "Too many people close together and I can't use my power well, but I can use them on the empty spaces out there."

The monkey was loping toward them on all fours, its face a mask of rage. It roared, and Sophia's ears rang despite the ear protection Hebert's father had insisted they all wear. It seemed he had been right; Sophia felt a little disoriented even with it.

"Go!" Vista shouted.

A moment later they were all on the other side of the field, facing the city and the back of the ape, who looked confused for a moment.

Miss Militia was holding something over her shoulder; it was a missile launcher, and Sophia and everyone else dived out of the way behind her. A missile exploded out toward the monkey's backside.

Sophia held her breath, but a moment before impact the monkey was simply gone.

"She's in the air," Armsmaster shouted. "We've got to move!"

Sophia looked up and she froze as she saw a shape blocking out the moon. The monkey was in the sky, having leapt so high that it was now blotting out the sky.

She felt Sophia's dad's grip on her arm, and he pulled her through one of Vista's tunnels. They were now even farther from the city.

Not everyone had been able to react fast enough though. Whether it was the sound of the roar or simple confusion, Clockblocker and Gallant had both frozen.

Even though Sophia didn't particularly like either of them, she didn't want them killed.

The monkey's descent suddenly swerved right as space warped around her. She landed a hundred yards away from the boys.

Vista was beside Sophia, and Sophia could see that she was sweating.

A moment later the boys were beside them.

The monkey's red eyes almost seemed to be glowing with rage. It turned to stare at them for a moment, and its brow almost seemed to furrow as it tried to understand what was happening.

Finally, it stared at them and looked as though it was going to attack again.

Miss Militia sighed, and she shouldered a bigger missile.

"I'm sorry Mr. Hebert," she said.

A moment later the missile was in the air. The ape stared malevolently at them as the missile struck. The explosion eclipsed anything Sophia had every heard, and the cloud around the beast was at least a hundred and fifty feet high. Even with ear protection, Sophia's ears rang to the sound of the explosion.

Dust was blown back at them even though they were several football fields away, and Sophia's eyes watered. It took her a moment to realized that she was seeing something moving inside the cloud.

A moment later the cloud dissipated, and there wasn't even a body left.

"Above us!" Mr. Hebert screamed.

This time it was Vista who froze. The monkey was almost directly above them, and it's mouth was opened.

Sophia saw death in it's face, and she realized that they were all dead.

Something large and metallic slammed into the side of the monkye, knocking it to the side. It took Sophia a moment to realize what she was seeing.

It was a slender, gray giant robot with glowing white eyes. It was as tall as the monkey, but it looked primitive, a little like the tin woodsman with a prominent jaw.

"SUPERMAN!" the robot shouted with Leet's voice.

Sophia frowned.

"Is that what Superman looked like? When was he a robot?"

The monkey roared at the robot, and a moment later it lunged forward, grabbing for the giant iron robot in front of it and ignoring anything else.

"He's bought us a little breathing room," Armsmaster said. "Now we have to take advantage of it."


	30. Monkey business

The chest-plate of the robot slid open, and a huge blast of energy hit the giant monkey in the chest, driving it back even as guns on tentacles emerged and began blasting the monkey directly in the face.

The monkey roared, blinded, and energy exploded from it's mouth, vaporizing the robot's head. The energy continued behind it, exploding a small hill and leaving deep gouges in the soil. That didn't stop the robot from driving the monkey back; apparently it didn't have anything important in its head.

"They're moving too much for me to get Clockblocker close," Vista said, her face scrunched up with worry. "They'll step on him!"

Gallant shook his head. "There's no way I'll be able to calm her, not when she's in the middle of a fight. If I'd been able to do it before the Merchants had gotten to her..."

Sophia heard the sound of an engine from behind them. She turned and saw a man in a jeep dressed in brown loose fitting trousers and an obi with an under tunic. The costume seemed familiar somehow, although she wasn't sure where she'd seen it before. The jeep slid to a stop, and the man leaped out of the jeep.

"You've got it?" Hebert's dad asked.

"He finished it right before he got in the control pod for that," the man said. He nodded at the giant robot that was still fighting the Hebert monkey. He was wearing a domino mask, but the rest of his outfit seemed familiar, like it was from some movie or another.

In his hand he was carrying something that seemed like a combination of a sword hilt and a flashlight.

"I can do it," Hebert's dad said.

The other man shook his head. "You're stronger, but this is going to take fast, and we've established which of us is better at this."

Apparently they had sparred before. It took Sophia a moment to realize it, but now she recognized him. This was Hebert's trainer, the one who had left all the bruises on her.

She doubted he'd be able to do that now, not with the way the robot was flailing ineffectually at her. Its energy blasts seemed to be more effective, for all that its size matched the monkey.

Hebert's father hesitated, then he nodded. Apparently Hebert's trainer was the better fighter, even if he was physically stronger.

"Go," he said.

He turned to Vista. "Can you get him close to them?"

She glanced at Armsmaster, who hesitated. He looked closely at the two men, then nodded.

Space warped, and the man was suddenly too close to the feet of the monster and the robot. His hilt blazed into light, and Sophia heard a sudden sqee of excitement from Vista.

A light saber. He had a light saber.

Sophia recognized the costume now; she should have seen it before even though she really didn't watch a lot of nerd movies. Clockblocker could probably have told her exactly which movie it was from, not that she cared.

He'd spent the time dressing up for this? Of course, if he was waiting for the light saber to be made he might have had the time, and if he and his friend were the nerds she thought they were, he might have even had the costume already.

Still, in Sophia's opinion it sensed a bad message about the seriousness of all of this. Hebert was going to be badly injured or killed, or even worse, she was going to wake up tomorrow morning to find her entire town in ashes. Either way, this was a grim occasion.

Sophia wished she'd had time to tell her parents to get out; the monkey was clearing overpowering the robot, and if their other plans didn't pan out it was possible that none of them were going to survive the night.

Vista hadn't dared get Hebert's trainer any closer than a hundred yards from the towering behemoths, and he was running toward them. He was dodging falling debris as the monkey was tearing the robot into pieces.

He was moving like an Olympic champion, and Sophia found herself holding her breath.

Reaching the two of them, he let the light saber die, shoving it into his belt. It took Sophia a moment to realize the problem; the base of Hebert's tail was at least twenty feet above the ground, and he didn't have any way to get to it.

"Help him," Armsmaster gritted out to Vista.

The distance between the man and the tail suddenly vanished, and it took him a moment to realize what had happened.

The monkey finally seemed to notice him, however, and it twisted, throwing the robot toward him even as it ripped its arm off.

Vita gave out a little scream and twisted space again, bringing the man back to them.

He was sweating, and he looked back at the enraged beast, which was jumping up and down on the robot, turning it into scrap metal with every jump.

It wasn't going to be long before the monkey noticed them again, and sooner of later Vista was going to make a mistake. All it would take would being a moment too slow and they'd all go up in the same fire that had disintegrated Hookwolf.

Sophia didn't want to die, but even more than that she didn't want to die cowering behind Vista. She was better than that, and there might be at least one chance that wouldn't lead to them all being killed.

"Give it to me," she said to the man. Before he could respond she grabbed the light saber from his belt.

A moment later she was running cross the field. Of them all she had the best chance of getting close to the monkey. In her shadow form she might even be immune to its blast, although the fact that electrical fields still affected her suggested that it was best not to hope.

That wasn't the kind of thing you wanted to be wrong about.

Space warped around her, and unlike the man who'd been trying to pretend to be a Jedi, Sophia was familiar with Vista's powers.

The monkey looked up from the ruins of the robot, and it's red eyes met hers. It's face looked even more enraged, and it opened it's mouth. It took Sophia a moment to realize that it wasn't planning to roar.

Light blinded her, but she suddenly wasn't where she had been. She was closer.

She leapt, going shadow, which let her leap higher than she should have otherwise been able to do. The monkey suddenly wasn't where she'd thought it would be, though. It had turned toward Vista's group, and it was already jumping toward them.

Vista was already shifting space, but the monkey had apparently been watching; the moment it landed in the spot they had been in launched itself in their direction.

It never reached them.

A pale figure slammed into it with a supersonic boom, and it clawed at her even as she drove it backward creating a huge gouge in the earth.

Alexandria!

Apparently Armsmaster had finally gotten off his ass and called in the big guns even though it was two in the morning.

Legend was there, firing blast after blast. They struck the monkey, who roared in rage.

The monkey blasted Alexandria, bathing her body in light, and when it was done, she floated in the moonlight, now naked, and seemingly unconcerned. Her skin was pale in the moonlight, and she looked strangely young considering how long she had been in the business. She flashed forward, faster than Sophia could see, and the monkey staggered back, falling on its back with a thud that made the ground tremble.

They hadn't even bothered to wake Eidolon for this one, but two Triumvirate members was impressive enough. The monkey roared again.

It lunged forward, smashing Alexandria with a hairy fist. She was driven back, hitting the earth with an explosion of earth. She was out of it a moment later, unhurt, and now it was the monkey's turn to fly back.

The fight was brutal; Alexandria slammed into the monkey again and again, hard enough that Sophia wondered whether she'd been informed that Hebert wasn't entirely responsible for her actions. Was she trying to kill her?

In turn the monkey seemed to be getting more and more frustrated by its inability to hurt her. If it had been Lung it would have been growing exponential, but that wasn't its power set.

It had a low sort of cunning, but its intelligence wasn't nearly that of Hebert. Hebert would have found some way of fighting back, or at least of fleeing. The monkey didn't understand anything but the fight though, and so it pressed desperately on even though it was clearly outmatched.

The impressive thing was that the fight lasted as long as it had. Alexandria had been known to take out notoriously strong capes in a single punch, sometimes with a flick of her finger. Was it lasting as long as it did because she was holding back, or was it because the monkey was just that tough?

The fight lasted less than two minutes though; it was a brutal beating at the hands of two of the three strongest capes in the world. The monkey wasn't fast enough; after the first few blows Alexandria had started dodging. It was obviously more due to the inconvenience of being thrown back than because she was actually hurt. Decades of experience in fighting Endbringers between Legend and Alexandria showed; they worked together as a unit, one striking while the other kept the monster off balance.

It wasn't any contest. Endbringers were smart, and the monkey was not. Alexandria surged forward with a final uppercut. The monkey twisted as it fell to the ground, landing face forward. It was heavily beaten.

Sophia ran forward. Before Alexandria or Legend could do anything, she switched the light saber on and lunged forward toward the tail.

It came off, and for a moment it didn't look like anything was going to happen. A moment after that Hebert began to change back into her ordinary form. She rolled over and Sophia had to dodge to keep from being crushed.

There were hideous burns all over her chest; whether they were from Miss Militia or from the robot or from Legend Sophia didn't know. What she did know was that Hebert had broken bones and she could feel her ribs shifting in ways that weren't natural.

She was naked, and as the others ran up to her, Sophia grabbed her cloak and covered her. She deserved better than to have Clockblocker gaping at her.

Fortunately he was gaping up at Alexandria at the moment.

"We need to get her to the hospital." she said. "NOW."

Alexandria was landing next to Armsmaster. The man in the Jedi outfit pulled off his outer cloak and handed it to her. As she slipped into it without comment, she said "I'm going to need a debriefing."

He nodded. "If you could get her to Brockton Bay general, I'll call New Wave. We're going to have a lot to talk about."

Alexandria nodded. A moment later she took Hebert from Sophia, bundled her in her arms and then both of them were gone.

Everything was suddenly silent, the only sound coming from the burning warehouses at the edge of town. Sophia wondered if someone would see to them; most likely all the fire fighters were holed up in the Endbringer shelters.

"So we won, right?" Clockblocker asked.

"If my daughter survives," Mr. Hebert said. He looked pensive."If not, then no."

If she survived, she would be even stronger, Sophia realized suddenly. Just how strong was she now?

Probably strong enough that she could have killed Hookwolf on her own, easily. She wasn't anywhere near Alexandria, of course, but no one was, but she was still going to be one of the heaviest hitters in the entire Bay area, if not the heavy hitter.

Legend was landing.

Everyone in the group suddenly stood a little straighter. There was something about the man that was impressive, even in ways that Alexandria hadn't been. Of course, it was hard to be impressive when you are nude.

"Armsmaster gave us a rundown of your daughter's abilities," he said. "We'd like it very much if we had a discussion about maximizing her potential growth."

"So she can be one of the Triumvirate?" Mr. Hebert asked.

"So she can surpass us," he said. "Someone with powers like your daughter's won't be satisfied sitting on her laurels; eventually she's going to keep seeking out bigger and bigger challenges. Wouldn't it be better if she had a team backing her up?"

Mr. Hebert glanced back at everyone else. "This might be a discussion better held in private. Whatever happened, I'm not going to make a decision without asking my daughter."

"We got lucky tonight," Armsmaster interjected. "How many innocent people could have died? How many people did die, even if they were criminals?"

It was likely in the hundreds, although Sophia suspected that the exact number would never be found, because some of the victims hadn't left enough in the way of remains to scrape into a dustpan.

While she didn't have any sympathy for the members of the Empire, she could see how the legal system might frown on mass murder. She herself had only maimed a few criminals and the system had almost lost their shit.

She doubted that the Heberts could afford the kind of high priced lawyer that could get her out from genocide. She could see that realization on the face of Hebert's dad.

"Are you saying you want to force Taylor into the Wards?" Mr. Hebert said, a dangerous tone in his voice. Apparently he wasn't going to let the threat of prison to make him back down.

"There's legal precedent," Armsmaster said. He glanced toward Sophia, who gave him the finger.

She'd pay for it later, but she saw a glimmer of amusement in Mr. Hebert's eyes.

Why was she seeking approval from a man who had powers and hadn't even chosen to go out and fight the good fight? Even Hebert had done more than he had; it was possible that they'd triggered at the same time, but it was just as possible that he'd been sitting on his powers for years, wasting them.

Yet still, his approval seemed to matter.

The last thing Sophia wanted to believe was that she was one of those girls who had daddy issues; she had nothing but contempt for them. Just because someone grew up with a difficult childhood didn't give them the right to start making all kinds of ridiculous choices.

Maybe it was the fact that he seemed to support Hebert in becoming a hero. That was more than Sophia had from her own family. Her own mother seemed to begrudge the time she spent with the Wards.

She had to realize that there wasn't any way that Sophia was going to end up as a smarmy little college girl the way she wanted.

"I'm not sure that press ganging teenagers into a dangerous job is the best way to get motivated employees," Mr. Hebert said.

Suddenly Sophia found herself liking him a little more.

"No one is talking about press ganging anyone," Legend said. "We simply want to present our case for things that we can offer... an unlimited food budget, the best sparring partners anyone could ask for, resources that other people couldn't get for years."

"You seem to know a lot about us," Mr. Hebert said stiffly.

"Contrary to what some people would say, the Protectorate isn't incompetent. We do our homework."

Legend leaned forward and said "We've dealt with members of your family in the past, Mr. Hebert." The man staggered back, looking shocked.

Were there other Heberts in the hero business? That was unusual; Sophia had thought New Wave was entirely unique in that so many of them had triggered. Individual second generation triggers were relatively common, but entire families?

Of course, given secret identities it was possible that half the capes in the eastern seaboard were Hebert relatives.

He continued as though nothing had happened. "These offers don't just apply to your daughter either. They apply to you, your friend here and the Tinker who has been supplying you. Even if some of you find our rules restrictive, there is always the possibility of taking a consultant position."

Hebert's father frowned, and the man beside him looked suddenly contemplative.

"We should go to the hospital and see that your daughter is all right. I suspect at this point that if she wanted to leave, no one in the city except me or Alexandria could stop her anyway."

Armsmaster turned to the rest of them.

"Due to Youth Guard rules, we can't force you to stay up even though tomorrow is not a school day. I would encourage you to get to the rig as early as you can tomorrow morning. We will need to have a debriefing and a strategy session where we will discuss the things that we did right, and strategies for similar issues in the future."

"Um, nobody told me that giant monkeys would be a regular thing in this job," Clockblocker joked. For once he almost sounded serious. "Or I would have seriously asked for more pay."

He hadn't even done anything the whole combat, Sophia thought dismissively, other than hide behind a child. Vista had carried the whole fight, really while everyone else had stood around with their thumbs up their noses.

She hesitated, then walked up to Vista, who flinched.

Sophia put her hand on her shoulder and said, "Good job, Squirt."

The astonished look on Vista's face almost made it all worth it. Sophia walked away. For once she was almost looking forward to the debriefing in the morning. They'd all made mistakes and she was going to enjoy the reaming they were likely to get.

She picked up the tail, which had shrunk to a more human size. Maybe she could get it stuffed or something.


	31. Accidentally

I woke up, startled and confused.

There was a sudden sensation of falling, and instinctively I lurched upward. It took me a moment to realize that I was floating.

"So you _can_ fly," a voice said beside me.

I looked over and froze. Alexandria was sitting beside me, staring at me contemplatively.

Alexandria...here. Part of me wanted to squee, but another part of me wanted to cower. If Alexandria was here it meant that things had gone badly wrong.

Wait, what?

I looked down and I was floating over the wrecked remains of a bed. It looked like a bomb had hit it.

"You aren't safe to be around other people right now," Alexandria said smoothly. "Until you get used to your new strength. It would be embarrasing to _accidentally_ rip someone's arm off."

"Did I... do that intentionally?" I asked. The last thing I remembered was seeing the moon and feeling power filling my body.

"I have a suspicion that you won't have many problems with the Empire in the future," Alexandria said, her lip twitching slightly.

"What happened?"

"You confirmed a few things for us last night," Alexandria said. "A few things that were thought to be rumors or unbelievable. Did you know you have relatives in China?"

"What?"

"They have a top secret breeding program where they keep trying to breed people like you, but they keep dying off for some reason or rebelling against the system. We've had some... unpleasant experiences with them in the past. "

"There are others?" I asked.

"Not many, and the CUI prefers to keep them a state secret. We've got agents inside, of course, and we know more than they think we do."

I was silent for a long moment. So they didn't have access to anyone else like me, not without getting the cooperation of the notoriously uncooperative CUI.

"Did I... turn into an ape?"

"A monkey technically," she said. "Apes don't have tails."

I frowned and willed myself to move beside the wrecked bed. "Did I do that?"

"They don't make beds designed for people in our strength class," Alexandria said. "At least not at this hospital."

As I landed I took a half step forward and felt myself suddenly shooting for the ceiling.

A hand on my shoulder stopped me and forced me to the floor with a grip like iron. "You're likely three hundred times as strong as you were yesterday, possibly more," she said. "You need to be careful."

I took a deep breath and steadied myself.

"How many people died?"

She stared at me appraisingly. Finally, she said, "We don't know. There weren't a lot of remains left and we aren't sure how many escaped."

"An estimate then?"

"Over three hundred," she said. "Including most of the Empire capes and Squealer and Skidmark of the Merchants."

Dad had warned me about the moon, but I hadn't thought it would be something I'd ever have to deal with. After all, I didn't have a tail. I reached behind myself to feel, and almost spun around before being steadied again by Alexandria.

A quick check showed that I was mercifully tail free.

"It was removed," Alexandria said. "For the safety of everyone."

I nodded grimly. Dad had been right. The full moon was a curse to our kind. I'd massacred more people than I had in all my classes at school combined. It was mindboggling to think that I was now a mass murderer.

Even if some of them had deserved it.

"Did I kill any innocents?" I held my breath. This was the question that mattered more than any other. If I'd killed a lot of innocents it was possible that Alexandria was here to escort me to the Birdcage.

"No. Through the efforts of the Protectorate, the Wards, and a tinker who for some reason had a replica of the Iron Giant on hand you only burned twelve warehouses and fourteen abandoned buildings."

I stared at her for a moment. "I don't think my allowance is going to cover that."

"There are alternatives," she said. "Among which is joining a team that has the resources to cover those costs. Estimates of the damage haven't been done yet, and I fully expect that the owners are going to try to inflate their property values. It's likely in the low tens of millions."

I glanced at the bed, wondering how much it had cost.

Alexandria caught my look. "Wholesale on a bed like that is around seven thousand dollars. The hospital will likely charge considerably more simply because they can."

I was feeling more miserable by the second.

"Wouldn't it be cheaper just to get rid of me?" I asked. I was afraid to move, lest I break something else.

"Not when you've got such strong potential,' Alexandria said. She leaned forward. "Do you know how often Capes with the potential to be as strong as I am come along? Never."

"I'm not that strong."

"Not now," she said. "But you could be. That's part of what we're offering. I'd be happy to train you, and to provide other partners who are tough enough that you won't have to worry about crushing them, like you will your current trainer."

The thought hadn't occurred to me before. If I was really this strong, then I couldn't train with Garrett anymore, not until I got control of myself.

"The Protectorate has access to some of the finest chefs and an unlimited food budget," she said. "And we have the ability to make things happen in your personal life as well."

"Like getting me out of the school I'm in?"

"I've had a talk with your classmate Miss Hess," Alexandria said. "And it's clear that it probably isn't safe to leave you where you are."

I wondered if she thought I would suddenly go Carrie the next time Emma said something. Or maybe she thought people would explode into bags of meat if I brushed into them.

Given what I'd done with the hospital bed, that might actually be likely, although I didn't see how Arcadia would be any better.

"Does everyone know who I am?"

"The pictures we've gotten from the Internet aren't clear enough to make out your face," Alexandria said. "But its possible that there may have been classmates in the audience that recognized you. Some of them might have even survived."

So I might have killed people that I knew. I was feeling worse and worse every moment.

"Miss Hess was unusually forthcoming in her role in making your school life difficult. If you'd like, we can transfer her somewhere less pleasant."

I shook my head. "She was never the one who did the most damage; it was mostly pushing and shoving. It's Emma who's made my life a living hell."

"We can make that problem go away too," she said.

"What, kill her?" I asked incredulously.

She shook her head. "Give her father a lucrative position in another city and suddenly she's no longer a problem."

"That sounds too much like a reward," I said, frowning. "Maybe if I could go to Arcadia."

"Things like that have been arranged in the past," she said. "When we have reason to do so."

"If I join the Wards," I said flatly. "Isn't that mostly going out for PR functions and pretending to patrol, mostly in the safest parts of town?"

"If the Youth Guard had its way, that would be true," Alexandria said. "But it would be a waste of your potential to make you stagnate like that for three years."

"So what are you offering?" I asked.

"A position in the Wards," she said. "But also a chance to do things that matter. From what we have heard from the CUI experiments, it's not enough simply to torture someone if they know you aren't going to kill them; they have to be exposed to real danger."

"Otherwise you'd just keep beating me until I was as strong as you are," I said.

"About ten more times would do it," she said. She looked slightly embarrassed. "We wouldn't do it without your permission of course."

I looked down. "Last night wasn't pleasant."

"Are you telling me that you wouldn't go through it again if it meant that you could be truly great?"

I was silent for a long moment before I sighed. "No. I probably would."

She nodded. "That means that if you join we'll be throwing you into danger over and over again. You'll have a team working with you, but things sometimes go wrong."

"Are you saying I shouldn't join?"

"Would you join if you thought I was lying about something like this?"

I shook my head. So far at least, she sounded like she was being honest, but she'd been doing this for a long time and I was only fourteen. Figuring out whether someone was lying wasn't in my skill set.

"So joining with you would get rid of a lot of my problems, but would create new ones."

"There's a cost to everything," she said, shrugging. "For example, what happens if you choose to _not_ join us?"

Were they planning on charging me for those three hundred deaths? I could feel Alexandria's grip, and I knew I'd have no chance against it. Maybe they just planned to sue me and Dad for those warehouses, garnishing our wages and starving us into submission.

I'd go villain before I let that happen.

"Are you threatening me?" I asked. I tried to pull away from her, but her grip was like iron.

"Not at all. But imagine not having opponents that are able to challenge you," she said. "Your development will plateau and then it will stop. You will never be strong enough to face an Endbringer, much less... live up to your own potential. You'll stagnate here, always knowing that you could have made a difference."

She released me, and I almost staggered back before I forced myself to float into the air. It was easier to hold myself this way.

"Maybe I'm strong enough," I said resentfully.

" _I'm_ not strong enough," Alexandria said. "I couldn't stop the Siberian. I can't stop Leviathan, Behemoth or the Simurgh. All I can do is slow them down. You, on the other hand might actually have a chance to beat all of them some day. I want to see you get there."

"That would take unimaginable power," I said. "Why would you trust a fourteen year old girl with that kind of power?"

"I was only a couple of years older than you when my powers manifested," Alexandria said. "I had to learn quickly, and I'm sure you can too."

"I'm not going to be able to make any decisions until I talk to my Dad," I said. "And I'm going to need some help getting used to this."

"Preferably somewhere where the furnishings aren't so expensive?" she asked. For the first time she had a genuine smile on her face. "I think I can help you with that."

Getting me out of the hospital wasn't as difficult as I'd feared. The sun still hadn't risen yet, and so Alexandria simply had me float out into the hallway, my feet a few inches from the floor. She kept one hand on my arm to steady me.

I'd been wearing a hospital gown; apparently becoming a giant monkey had done a number on my clothes, not that I'd had many clothes left after the fog cape and whoever it was inside his cloud had gotten done with me.

It was humiliating having Alexandria have to help dress me. Real parahumans didn't have this kind of problem. They instinctively understood their powers, even if they didn't always know all the potential uses.

So I was floating down the hallway wearing pink sweatclothes and no shoes. It wasn't a color I would have chosen, but it was a lot better than having my butt hanging out into the wind. I'd been given a domino mask too, although those things didn't really cover much of anything. They were more of a polite fiction than anything.

No one was up, except the nurses at the nurse's station. They carefully kept their eyes away from the both of us. I wasn't sure whether it was because they'd been warned by Alexandria, or just because it _was_ Alexandria.

She led me carefully through several sets of doors until we reached a staircase leading up to the roof. I floated up with her, and eventually we were out onto the roof.

"Your father warned me this might be the case, even though most parahumans have an instinctive knowledge of how to use their powers. There's exceptions to everything," she said, watching me closely.

I had no way of knowing just how much Dad had told them about our origins or our powers, and so I shrugged.

A moment later we were in the sky.

Flying was everything I had thought it would be. I was enthralled and amazed.

I was surprised when Alexandria led me to a familiar looking junkyard. How much did the Protectorate know about my history?

"The Protectorate purchased this land," she said. "Which gives us the legal right to observe tinkers who try to come here and steal parts."

The Protectorate liked to control things. That had been Leet's biggest complaint; I suspected he'd have been perfectly happy working for them if he wasn't convinced that they would tie him down in red tape every time he decided to make a new invention... or a video.

Alexandria made the Wards sound like the only real option for me, but what would I sacrifice by taking the deal? What would they ask me to do that I wouldn't want to do?

According to Sophia, the Protectorate actively kept capes from helping. How much of that was simply her own resentment, and how much of it was accurate? From what I'd heard Shadow Stalker had a history of brutality with criminals. While I didn't have a record that was much better, my attacks had been accidental.

I didn't get the sense that they planned to put me on the shelf like ordinary Wards; if they wanted to get their value out of me they'd need to keep me training and keep me fighting.

As we landed, I put my hand on a wrecked car and it slid ten feet sideways. I grimaced. This wasn't going to be easy.

The dump truck I'd worked do hard to move was standing there. I'd never really been able to move it at all, no matter how hard I'd tried. Garrett had joked about putting spikes into the ground.

I approached the dump truck, and I reached out and tried to lift it. The bumper came apart in my hands. I frowned. Maybe there was a way to use Ki to support the weight.

Frowning, I gathered my power and focused on the truck in front of me. I focused on strengthening the frame, and then I reached out and picked it up.

It felt like it weighed ten pounds.

Alexandria stared at me. "I couldn't do that, not without crumpling the whole thing."

"You just have to know how to use your life energy," I said casually. I transferred the whole thing to my right hand, holding it casually by a point. I was enjoying the look in her eyes.

"Life energy... right," she said. "We aren't here to do powers testing. We're here to get you safe enough that you won't kill people accidentally... again."

For a moment I thought she was talking about last night with the monkey, but then I realized that she was talking about earlier; the event that had led the Empire to attack me in the first place.

"All right," I said. I casually dropped the dump truck and it fell on me. I shrugged it off.

"We're going to start small and work our way up until you feel safe to deal with people."

"Why are you going to all this effort with me?" I asked.

She hesitated. "I've been fighting Endbringers for almost thirty years, and I've seen more friends die than I can count. I'm tired of always losing. A good day is one where only twenty five percent of the participating capes die, and only a few thousand civilians."

I stared at her. I hadn't realized that the numbers were so stark.

"If there is even the smallest chance that you can get stronger than I am, that you can finally put an end to even one of the Endbringers, then no amount of money, no amount of time is too much. It's possible that your power may not grow exponentially, that you'll level out well below where I am now. In that case we'll have another strong cape to fight the fight. But if you can be more... that's worth almost anything."

For the first time she seemed almost impassioned in what she was saying.

She was silent for a moment. "There are things that we don't talk about, because it would cause people to panic and make things even worse. Our best thinkers believe that if something doesn't change, the end of the world will happen within thirty years."

"At the earliest?" I asked faintly. I felt as though she'd just punched me in the stomach.

"At the latest," she said. "It could be as early as eight, or even earlier. Precognition is an inexact science. You can understand why we would be desperate for anything that could change those numbers. Kill a single Endbringer, and everything might change. Nothing might change. We won't know until it happens."

"How long do I have until the next attack?" I asked numbly.

"We have no plans to have you in the next attack," she said. "The Simurgh would love to kill off our one hope for things to change before swe are ready, which means we want to keep you as far from her as possible."

"And the other two?"

"There are theories that she might be controlling the others. It's controversial and not everyone agrees, but it's possible. We want you as strong as absolutely possible before you face an Endbringer, because they will likely target you preferentially."

"So how to I get there?" I asked. "How can I possibly get strong enough in time to make a difference."

"We've got a plan," Alexandria said. "And that starts with you learning to walk around in a world of tissue paper, because to people at our level of power that is what ordinary people are."

I stared at her, then sighed.

"So we're going to start with small things," she said. She handed me a wrench. I grabbed it and crushed it."

Right. I wouldn't want to do that to Dad accidentally. Iwouldn't even want to do that to Emma... accidentally anyway.


	32. Wards

"So you already have an idea of what your cape name is going to be?"

Michael Kennick was a young man. He was dressed in a thousand dollar suit, which made me wonder if he was trying too hard. Apparently it was traditional for Wards in this area to see someone called Glenn Chambers, but he was having knee surgery.

It was probably better that I get a less experienced man anyway; I was more likely to get what I wanted. I'd heard horror stories from Sophia about what they'd tried to put her in, and I wasn't going to let that happen to me.

Looking at the names they'd suggested, most of them were entirely inappropriate.

"Launch?" I asked, flipping through the names.

"It's from the Japanese for Lunch, given your predilections for eating. It's also a reference to your ability to fly."

"You may as well call me the Bulimic Bandit," I said. "I don't throw up... well, except that one time at Pace Taco, but they'd been shut down three times for health code violations."

"You knew that and you ate there?"

"They were having three tacos for a dollar!" I said, then I grimaced. "I think it sends a bad message to girls."

I flipped through several other names. "I'm trying to put the whole monkey thing behind me. There's no way I'm going with the Monkey Queen."

There were several martial arts names, but I didn't know enough to know whether they were any good or not.

"Exponential isn't bad," I said finally, "But I think I'm going to go with my own choice."

"And that would be?"

"People keep saying that I'm going to be the next Alexandria," I said. "And my name should reflect that."

"Thebes?" he asked.

I shook my head. "Sparta. The Spartans were some of the greatest warriors of the ancient world. They threw their children to the wolves, and it only made them stronger."

He winced. "That seems a little on the nose."

I'd seen the videos of the battle when I was a monkey. For all the screaming from the Youth Guard, most of the fighting had been done by the children. They hadn't hesitated at throwing children against a monkey capable of throwing a building.

"It's appropriate though."

He frowned. "Alexandria is an Egyptian city."

"Isn't it traditional for capes to take Greek names?" I asked.

"It's common. I wouldn't have thought that you wanted something common for your name."

"What they call me won't matter," I said. "They could call me Rainbow Princess, and if I kill an Endbringer they'll be a term of power. If I don't do anything impressive, the best name in the world won't make a difference."

"Perceptions matter," he said. "When you aren't fighting. Most capes use their personas as a way to evoke an emotion; respect, fear, adoration. The question is what you are trying to evoke in people."

"People are going to fear me when they realize what I can do," I said. "There's nothing I can do about that. They'll respect me if I do anything worthy of respect; otherwise they won't. As for adoration? If people love me just because I'm powerful, then its not a real kind of love."

"What do you want then?" he asked.

"I want to fight," I said. "I want to make the world a place that is worth living. I want to make a difference."

He stared at me for a moment, then he sighed. "So you want something Greek themed in a costume?"

I shook my head. "I'm fine with my Gi as it is; I wouldn't mind doing it in black. Shadowstalker keeps telling me I look like I've just broken out of jail."

"So you'll have a Greek name while wearing a Chinese costume?"

"Does it matter?" I asked. "Who says any of it has to make sense?"

"People are going to comment." he said slowly.

"And I care why?" I asked. "You've heard the old joke, right? Where does an eight hundred pound gorilla sit?"

He sighed. "Whereever it wants to."

"Most of the Wards are prancing PR ponies," I said. "So they've got to be photogenic. You've got to sell the merchandise after all."

I hesitated. "Do I get a cut of merchandising sales?"

"That's not my department,' he said smoothly.

Which meant the answer was no. Well, I'd probably collect my pay in food anyway, and if I disliked the deal I could always leave.

"We can talk about a mask, anyway," I said. "Since they want me to get as far away from the whole Hood thing as possible."

They were likely trying to repair their image and didn't need me around to inflame the people. That didn't matter to me as much as they thought it should. I'd found Alexandria and Legend to be really reasonable people, but Armsmaster and Piggot seemed like real asses.

It was probably like that in every organization; a few bad apples spoiling everything, or maybe a few good apples in a bad batch. I'd have to watch to see which was which.

"I have some ideas," he said. "A domino mask is a polite fiction; you'll want something that is a little more concealing."

"Maybe a half mask?" I asked. "Leaving my hair flowing but covering my cheeks and upper face?"

He began sketching. "Something like this?"

I nodded.

"It's important to leave the mouth visible," he said. "For all that you don't care about what people think, if you are relatable they'll cooperate with you better. That'll make investigations easier. You can't imagine that they'll just keep pointing you at targets to punch?"

"Can't I?" I asked. "That's pretty much what I signed up for. I doubt I'll be very good as a detective, but fighting is what I was born to do."

Literally, although he didn't need to know that.

He frowned. "Wards aren't child soldiers."

I smirked at him. "I'm fourteen. I'm not an idiot. Just because you call it something else doesn't make it not true."

"And you are all right about that?"

"I hit things hard," I said. "What else am I going to do with my life... work at a construction company? My nature makes me want to do the things the Protectorate wants me to do anyway, except it's legal and I get paid."

He stared at me for a moment, and then said, "Maybe we can get back to the matter of masks."

I smiled at him.

Unlike the rest of the Wards, I wasn't here to stand around and look pretty. I wasn't there to engage in politics, or to do anything but one thing.

Because of that, I doubted that Alexandria or the others cared much about my costume choices. They'd let Clockblocker have his way after all, and his name was idiotic.

The session was over after thirty minutes. I still wasn't sure about the helmet he'd gotten me to agree to; while it was true that it would cover my features and make it less likely that I would be recognized, it would also cover my hair, my one good feature.

The tinkertech he'd suggessted putting inside was the thing that had convinced me. Communication, possibly other information; added to my Ki sense it would give me a real advantage.

Still, hopefully it didn't look stupid. I doubted that it would last through any real battles anyway; after all, Alexandria's clothes hadn't during our battle, even if they'd blurred out all the nudity in the videos they'd given me, and her face.

"Where to next?" I asked Miss Militia as we rode up the elevator. I was wearing a domino mask out of the polite fiction that no one would recognize me. The roles of the dead still hadn't been compiled for the Empire, so it was possible that there were some capes remaining out there.

If there were, I wouldn't let them threaten my father, assuming they even had any idea who I was; after all, seeing the face of a generic nobody wasn't the same as knowing who they were.

"We're introducing you to the Wards," she said. She had been a little stiff to me ever since I'd met her this morning. It was a marked contrast to Alexandria and Legend, who seemed enthusiastic about having me on board.

Hopefully my reception with the Wards would be better.

A light flashed as the elevator stopped.

I stared at her for a moment. "I get the impression that you don't like me."

Her hand tightened on the knife in her hand. I remained relaxed.

In the confines of the elevator, there wasn't likely anything she could use against me that would hurt me overly much. I could see the realization of that in her expression, and I wondered if that was part of her nervousness around me. Most likely she was used to being one of the most powerful people in the room.

"I don't know you," she said. She was silent for a moment. "I don't approve of what they have planned for you either. I was a child soldier, and you may not understand yet what that means, but there is a price you pay later."

"For meeting my potential?" I asked. I smiled at her. "I'd be doing this even if nobody was paying me. At least you're admitting what this really is... the PR guy was shocked when I brought up the idea."

She stared at me for a moment, then sighed. "If you have any questions, my door is always open."

"I've got people in my life who are in my corner," I said. "But more is always better."

A bell rang, and the door opened.

They were there, standing and staring silently.

I recognized most of them, even though they were wearing domino masks instead of their usual masks.

Vista had been there the longest, and from what I'd seen she'd been the most valuable player against my monkey alter ego. There were likely ways I could get around her ability; I was still working out plans to deal with it, not that I ever planned to attack the Wards.

Aegis wasn't in my weight class. As a brute, he would have barely been able to hold his own before I'd been captured by the Empire. Now he was a nonentity.

I didn't know much about Gallant; Leet thought he might be some kind of master, which made him a danger to me. He hadn't done anything about the monkey, although whether that was because he couldn't or because he'd been too scared I couldn't tell. It meant I didn't know enough about him to judge, which meant I needed to be cautious around him.

Clockblocker was an idiot, but his power was major league. Letting him get close to me wasn't something I wanted to do.

There was a new tinker; I couldn't remember his name, but like all tinkers, he deserved a little respect. They tended to come up with unexpected powers when it was most inconvenient.

Shadow Stalker was leaning up against the corner. She lifted her hand, as though to wave, but thought better of it.

"This is your new teammate," Miss Militia said. "Her name will be Sparta."

They were all staring at me as though I had a second head. No one said anything, and no one stepped forward to introduce themselves to me.

"I've heard a rumor that if you piss her off enough her tail will grow back," Shadow Stalker drawled from the corner. "And it'll be twice as strong next time around. It's probably a good idea to play nice."

Gallant frowned, then stepped forward, offering his hand. "I'm sorry... we weren't expecting you so early."

"They were just monkeying around before you got here," Sophia said. She smirked.

He glared at her, then glanced back at me. "No one has really talked about how you're going to fit into the team."

"The regular way I guess," I said. "Except I'm likely going to get called away for special missions occasionally."

I shook his hand, and he winced, even though I was careful to not crush his bones.

"It'll be good to have another girl on the team," Vista said weakly. She was staring at me as though I was going to start transforming this very second and start trashing the base.

The others didn't say anything.

"So...that was pretty intense the other night," Clockblocker said cautiously. "Is that like a regular thing for you?"

"It's just during the full moon," I said. "Like a werewolf, with more energy blasts. And I'm fine as long as I don't have the tail."

I would have expected at least some of the guys to have looked at my butt; none of them even twitched. Nobody else said anything, and the silence stretched out awkwardly.

"So have you been through power testing?" Gallant asked.

"Some informal testing with Alexandria," I said. "I don't think they have a machine here strong enough to test my strength or my energy blasts. I can fly now, which is really cool, but nobody is sure how tough I am, not until they start shooting at me and see when I bleed."

"That's not how they check for that!" Gallant said, shocked.

"How else are they going to figure out what I can take?" I asked.

They were all looking at me as though I'd just told them my Dad beat me on a regular basis. What kind of training did they give these kids?

"They'll probably have Miss Militia do it," I said. "Have Panacea stand by in case she blows a hole in my rib cage. Worth their way up until it hurts badly."

"Ain't nothing compared to what the Empire did to her," Sophia said quietly. "And at least this time she'll be the one agreeing to it."

"That's not how we do things here!" Vista said. She scowled. "Just because you get stronger when people hurt you doesn't give anyone the right to keep hurting you."

I clapped my hand on Miss Militia's shoulder and she flinched.

"Isn't it better that a friend do it instead of an enemy?" I asked. "I'm going to be facing Lung and the Slaughterhouse Nine sooner or later, and the stronger I am the better."

Everyone gave a gasp at the mention of the Nine, and Clockblocker actually stepped away.

"We aren't facing the Nine," Vista said firmly. "Or Lung."

"What happened to the Empire is going to leave a power vacuum," I said. "People are going to want to take over. Sooner or later I'll be fighting Lung. Ono Lee too, probably, although I doubt he'll be much danger."

"Don't get overconfident," Gallant said. "Lung has taken on the entire Protectorate and he's still standing. He's fought Leviathan, and he's still here."

"He hasn't taken on the entire Protectorate," I said. "I just joined."

"Wow," Vista said. "I thought Shadowstalker was crazy."

"You all saw what she did for me," Shadowstalker said from the corner. "And she doesn't even like me that much. You ever think what she'll do for a teammate she actually likes?"

The group fell silent.

Shadowstalker sighed and pushed away from the wall.

"You guys are idiots," she said. "You think any of us aren't a danger? Vista could push any of us a thousand feet up and drop us. Aegis could break our bones. Clockblocker could... give us a time out I guess. Gallant could make us feel a little sad. OK, some of us are more dangerous than the others. That doesn't mean that any one of us couldn't pick up a gun and go crazy with it."

"Shadowstalker..." Miss Militia said in a warning tone.

"We don't because that's not who we are. I don't like most of you, but I haven't shot anybody in the back with a crossbow because I know that deep down you all at least want to try to be a hero. He...Sparta here is actually nicer than I am, and you're treating her like she's going to go ape on you the minute you turn your back."

Everyone shifted uneasily.

"From all reports, she's a fifth as strong as the ape now," Sophia said. "And a lot smarter. Which means she could probably murder everyone in this room without breaking a sweat. But someone who would let themselves be tortured instead of seeing it happen to an enemy would never do that."

The more Sophia kept trying to help, the more uneasy everyone seemed. Reminding them constantly that I could have murdered them all recently wasn't buying me any loyalty. I had a bigger body count than most of them had friends and acquaintances, and I could see that in their eyes.

I couldn't say that it didn't hurt. Still, I wasn't actually here to make friends. I was here to make a difference. I wasn't even sure that I'd be spending a lot of time here anyway. It would have been nice to have made friends though.

Sophia scowled. "She did a lot more than just take a bullet for me. If you disrespect her, we're going to have a problem You think I'm a bitch now?"

"Sophia," Miss Militia said. "Maybe you should give Sparta a tour of the premises while I have a talk with your colleagues."

She nodded curtly.

"Come on Hebert," she said, grabbing my hand. "I'll take you down to the cafeteria. Maybe we can get in front of the line. Food's not bad here. The pancakes are great."

I grinned for the first time.

Pancakes.


	33. Rage

"Are you sure about this?" I asked.

Dad forced a smile. "Someone has to keep an eye on you, and I don't really trust these people as far as I can throw them."

His costume was blue and it was tighter than I would like. At the power level he was at now he wasn't anything special for a cape, but I suspected that they wanted him as a backup in case I was killed. Despite all of Alexandria's pretty words, I suspected that she'd do anything to save the world, even sacrifice a single child.

"Besides; I got a great contract for the Dockworkers and I'm only doing this part time." He tried to smile, but I could tell that he was conflicted about the whole thing. He'd renounced all of this a long time ago; he'd been in it with Mom long enough to know whether he'd like it or not.

I knew he was doing it for me. He had reservations about their plans for me, and this was the only way he was going to keep an eye on me. He could have said no, but ultimately saving the world meant saving me too.

It hurt that he even had to pretend. I could see that he wasn't exactly happy about the situation; this was everything he'd never wanted for me wrapped up into one. If I was a better daughter I'd have given it up, but I couldn't.

If there was even a chance that I could make the world into a place where he could have grandchildren, I had to take it... not that I had any particular desires to have children.

It was a sign of how much they wanted me that they were even allowing him to only do this part time. I'd never heard of the Protectorate having part time members, although given secret identities it was possible that it had happened before.

"I still don't like them putting you on the front lines," I said.

"How else am I going to catch up?" Dad asked. He reached out and straightened my Gi. "I can't let my little girl get all the glory."

At least my new Gi was black with a gray undershirt. It was a nod to the idea of me being the next Alexandria without being too blatant about it. It was still the same kind of Gi that Garrett had gotten me though, a sign of respect for my old mentor. I still hadn't decided on a symbol to go on it.

"It's time," Miss Militia said. She stared at me for a moment. "You'll do fine."

"It's the press," I said. "How bad could it be?"

We were standing behind a stage, and I could feel the Ki of the two hundred or so reporters on the other side of the curtain. They were all fairly dim; none of them were likely to be any kind of threat.

Dad groaned and even Miss Militia looked at me.

"We'll try to keep it short," she said finally. "Try not to actually kill anyone and we'll call it a success."

As she stepped away, I turned to Dad. "Was she joking? Her mouth is covered, so I can't tell."

Dad frowned, then shook his head. "Try not to kill anyone in front of the cameras, no matter how annoying they are. If necessary, let me do the talking; I've got experience in dealing with these kinds of bottom feeders."

I felt confused. Wasn't this supposed to be some kind of superficial meet and greet? A chance for me to prance out like a show pony and make everyone ooh and ahh so that they could write a puff piece?

Piggot's voice on the other side of the curtain finally registered.

"We'd like to introduce our latest additions to the Brockton Bay lineup. Joining the Protectorate will be Anubis."

Dad's helmet looked like a stylized jackel; apparently he'd been less successful in his meeting with Glenn Chambers, who'd gotten out of surgery than I had with my representative.

My own helmet looked like an actual Spartan's helmet; Dad thought it looked like the helmet of a character named Doctor Fate, but I didn't know who that was. Mine was open around the mouth, and as promised, I had communication gear inside. Armsmaster was promising to add more to the helmet when he had time.

I had the impression that he didn't want to put too much effort into it because he thought it was going to keep being destroyed.

Stiffening suddenly, I realized that something was wrong.

My Ki sense had expanded fantastically since the incident; it now covered the entire city and then some. Normally, unless I was focused on it everything blended into the background, much like the conversations in a crowded diner. You focused on one thing and everything else faded into the background.

There were large numbers of life signs moving to surround the event.

For a moment I thought that it might be latecomers to the event, but there were only a hundred reporters outside, and there were at least three times as many life signs outside. They were coming in fast, and the way they were moving was suspicious.

I wasn't sure whether it was the remnants of the Empire come to get revenge, or if it was the ABB making a preemptive strike. In any case it didn't matter.

"And for our newest ward, I would like a warm welcome for Sparta," Piggot said.

The crowd fell silent as I stepped out. I stepped up to the podium.

"Get everyone away from the stage," I whispered to Dad in passing. "There's about to be some fireworks."

He stared at me questioning, and then his eyes widened. He still didn't have nearly the range I had, but they were close enough now that he could sense them.

The reporters were likely far enough from the stage that they would be fine, but I'd have to work especially hard to make sure that they weren't killed.

After all, it'd be terrible press to let a whole group of reporters get killed when they were trying to report about you, even if they were bottom fe3eders like Dad thought.

"I am Sparta," I said into the microphone. There was feedback on the microphone, a shrill shriek that made everyone wince. "And I am here to protect this city."

"There are reports that the giant ape sighting had something to do with you," a reporter said, not even waiting to be acknowledged. "Is it true that you are some kind of Proto-Endbringer?"

I stared at her, and then I leaned forward. "Are you calling me a giant ape? I've heard that some people have problems with Brutes... is that like being a racist? Because I really don't like racists."

As I stepped forward, I saw the entire crowd stiffen and take a collective breath.

"What can you do?" A second man asked hurriedly.

"I'm tough, strong and fast," I said. "And I can blow things up when I point at them."

I pointed at the next reporter, who flinched.

"The reports about the ape..." one reporter asked nervously.

"We're here to talk about what I can do for this city," I said. "As of this moment I am the strongest Cape in Brockton Bay. Anyone who disagrees can come and have a discussion with me about it."

If I was lucky Lung would get the message and he'd come for me. He was too prideful to go after Dad, even if he found out about him. He'd want a legitimate fight, something I was eager to give to him.

"That seems like a rather provocative statement," the same reporter said. "Aren't you afraid that someone will attack you?"

I could feel several life signs moving into position in buildings on both sides of me. Presumably Dad was telling the Protectorate what was going on and they were taking steps to keep the crowd safe.

I keyed the mike in my helmet and switched off the microphone I was using to speak to the crowd. I whispered, "They're in the buildings to the southwest, third and fourth floors."

Switching the other microphone back on, I said "I'd tell anyone who wants to come after me to bring it."

Before anyone could respond, I saw the windows of two of the buildings explode outwards. I could see missiles exploding out from them.

I could have jumped out of the way, but there were still people moving out from behind the stage and there was a chance that they would be hit. My only choice was to take the hit and hope that I survived.

A moment later there was an explosion of pain in my torso followed by a second one a moment later. Smoke obscured my vision, but I saw red.

They were trying to kill me? From hiding, like cowards?

This was the Empire, I was certain. Lung would have used Oni Lee for this sort of thing, and he wouldn't have done it in the first place for fear people would think he was afraid to face me.

They'd tortured me, and now they were trying to kill me. If they had a chance they'd kill my Dad, Sophia, Emma, anyone they thought I cared about just to punish me for whatever they'd thought I'd done to them.

Before the smoke even cleared, I exploded from my position, launching myself toward the first of the buildings. I could feel the stage collapsing under me as I did so.

The world turned into a blur as I shot toward the window with the stronger Ki signatures. I was moving so fast that I was already through the window before they even had a chance to drop the missile launcher. I knew who the ones in this building were; I recognized their signatures.

Night and Fog.

I'd learned their names since the last time, just as I'd learned the names of all the men I may have killed. They were assassins, dreaded back in their homeland. Night was a monster as long as she wasn't seen and Fog could kill with a single breath.

Fog was staring at me when I blasted him, causing his head to explode before he could enter his changer form. Fighting him would be useless; either I would blow him away of he would suffocate me, but he couldn't give me the kind of fight that I wanted.

Night could, though. I'd felt what she was in the dark, every cut, every slice, multiple armed monstrosity that she became. They'd taken great pleasure in being thorough when they'd worked me over.

Night screamed, but it wasn't a scream of grief, but one of rage.

Rage was good. I could work with rage. After all, that was what I was feeling, and now I had a partner to work through some of my anger.

She stopped and stared at me. She had to know that she couldn't fight me, not in her human form. She was tense, probably hoping she would find some way to escape.

If she was smart she'd take the opportunity to run when I gave it to her, even though it wouldn't be a real opportunity at all. I suspected though that she wouldn't though. I'd killed her partner, and she wasn't going to let that pass.

"I'm going to close my eyes now," I said. "Try to give me a good fight, won't you?"

What they'd done to me the last time had been more painful than any of the others, and they'd done it while I was in chains.

I closed my eyes, and I could hear her change. She roared and headed toward me.

With my Ki sense I knew where she was, even if I didn't know exactly what she was. It was strong and tough and it slashed out with vicious determination.

Fighting with my Ki sense was something I would have to practice more of; while I knew the position of her body I couldn't know where her limbs were, and she seemed to have more of them than she should have.

I felt chitin crack under my fists as I landed a blow. She was landing four blows for every one of mine, but I hit harder, and I was tougher than she was. We exploded through walls, and into the next room.

She roared again, catching my arm. I drove my fist into the center of mass, and I felt a moment to regret as I felt fluids as the chitin cracked again and again.

I hit her over and over again, breaking her the way she had broken me. I hadn't realized that I'd had this kind of rage until this very moment. Was this what the ape tapped into, an unbridled well of rage that was at the heart of every human, or was I disturbed?

Mom left me. Dad left me. Emma left me.

As I punched and punched it was a litany of offenses. Every time the other kids at school saw what was happening and they turned away. Every time I had seem something happening and hadn't done anything because it wasn't my business.

I was bleeding from a dozen places, but she was missing a couple of limbs. Unfortunately she still had several more.

All I had to do was open my eyes and it would all be over, but they deserved this. They were the ones who had turned the city into a cesspool, who had taken my Dad away from me. If it wasn't for the gangs the city would be better; Dad would be happy.

Mom might even be alive.

She fell suddenly, and I opened my eyes.

Lying on the ground in front of me was a woman; she did not look hurt at all."

"Can you still fight?"

"I heal whenever I return to human form," she said.

"Good," I said. "This may take a while."

I closed my eyes again.

I could feel the others being rounded up by my Dad and the others; able to follow them well enough to know that I had the luxury of enjoying this fight.

Night had to think that she only had to wear me down long enough and I would go down for good. Hope was insidious like that; it would keep you fighting when there was no chance at all.

Because I'd caught her measure. Her fighting style was curiously repetitive; there was a pattern to it, and now that I knew the pattern, I could fight her much more effectively. It was a little like the holograms Leet had made; at first I'd had trouble fighting them, but once I found the patterns Leet had been forced to change the programming to keep it interesting.

I slammed out once more and I heard a scream.

I opened my eyes and the woman Night was dead. Sophia was standing below me at the bottom of the stairs staring up at both of us. Apparently being seen by anyone changed her back.

Who knew?

"Are you done here?" Sophia asked after a moment. "There's a crap ton of Nazis out there that need to be rounded up."

I shook the blood off my hand and scowled.

"You might want to cover up, too," she said, pointing.

The front of my outfit hadn't survived the explosion and I hadn't even noticed. I was going to have to get Leet to make me something that was a lot more durable... or maybe I would have to learn to extend my Ki over my clothing so that it would be preserved.

Sophia pulled off her cloak and threw it up at me. I grabbed it and wrapped it around myself.

"I'll expect that back," she said. "And run it through the laundry at least three times. I don't want to catch anything from that crap you've got all over your hands."

I winced. Not all of the ichor had changed back, and I also had blood and other unknown fluids on my hands. Technically it was all evidence, but I intended to clean as much as I could off anyway. After all, it was technically a biohazard.

I floated down the stairwell toward Sophia.

"It was pretty dark in here, wasn't it?" I asked.

"What do you mean?" she asked.

I pointed upward, and a moment later the lights exploded into darkness. There were no exterior windows and the stairwell was plunged into darkness.

"Right," she said. "And when I opened the door you could suddenly see her but couldn't stop in time."

"It's the least you can do," I said.

As I floated outside my injuries finally started to hurt. Had I really attacked her because I was angry, or had that just been an excuse to fight someone who was at least somewhat in my weight class? I'd literally fought her with my eyes closed and still the fight hadn't been deeply satisfying.

I needed a challenge, someone who would force me to push myself. As far as I knew, there was only one man left in the Bay area who could even possibly do that.

Lung.

"Are you all right?" Dad asked, racing up to me.

"He was fighting Night in the dark," Sophia said. "I opened the door and she couldn't stop herself before she killed her."

Dad stared at me, and for a single horrible moment I thought that he saw right through me. How far gone was I that I beat a woman almost to death twice? It was almost like what they'd done to me.

Of course, I'd actually given her a chance, which was a lot more than they'd given me.


	34. Challenge

"I thought you were going to complain about those Capes that I killed," I said.

Apparently Sophia hadn't ratted me out, although I wasn't completely sure that she understood what I had been doing. It was for the best, of course.

"They attacked a minor with lethal force," Piggot said. "Lethal force in return isn't just expected, its justified. It might have been convenient if you could have gotten them alive, but killing Fog in particular was a sound tactical decision."

"If you hadn't taken decisive action against him you wouldn't have had many options," Armsmaster said. "It's possible that your energy could have destroyed his other form, but its likely you would have destroyed the entire building in the process. We're happy that you did that."

"So why am I here?" I asked.

"We've had some... concerns about the press conference," Piggot said.

"I thought I did great," I said. "I didn't blow up a single reporter."

"But you threatened one," Piggot said. "Pointing at them after telling them that's how you blow things up wasn't just a threat to one of them; it was a threat to all of them."

"They were being annoying and racist," I said.

"Calling you an ape is not racist when you are actually an ape," Piggot said. "And your PRT threat category isn't actually a race anyway. It's a threat assessment."

"They kept asking questions I didn't want to answer," I said sullenly.

"That's their job!" Piggot said.

"Then they shouldn't always expect to like the answers they get," I said, shrugging. "I'm not here to make nice. I'm here to fight things."

"That brings up the next point," Piggot said. She turned to Armsmaster. "Can you pull up the website?"

He did something with his fingers behind the screen, and a moment later video of me appeared on the wall.

"Play it."

There was a picture of me up on the stage. I looked surprisingly good in the costume, even if the helmet didn't really match the black and gray Gi. I spoke into the microphone.

"I'd tell anyone who wants to come after me to bring it."

A moment later there was an explosion.

"Bring it...bring it...brin..brin...brin...bring it," my voice said on a loop as I took missiles to the face over and over again. A peppy kind of music was playing in the background.

"This meme has gone viral," Piggot said. "Eclipsing your debut and even the fact that we caught a large chunk of the Empire."

"What?" I asked.

"People hate arrogance," Piggot said. "Even when it's deserved. Maybe even especially then. Look at how people see Alexandria and how they see Legend."

"They're both in the top three fighters in the world," I said.

"And which one would you trust more?"

I hesitated, then said, "Legend, I guess."

"Legend doesn't brag about his power; he doesn't have to. His powers speak for themselves. Usually only people who are insecure about their power brag."

"I wasn't bragging," I said. "I was just trying to get Lung to attack me."

"And that's the kind of decision you need to talk to the rest of us about before you make it," Piggot said. "What happens if Lung attacks on a day you aren't here?"

"I'd be disappointed?"

"And the rest of us would have a very bad day. Some of your teammates, maybe even your father could be killed. Just because you can survive an anti-tank missile doesn't mean the rest of us can."

"If he hurt Dad I'd pull his arms off," I said. I scowled. "And I'd beat him with them."

"He probably wouldn't realize that," Piggot said patiently, although her face was turning an alarming shade of red. "Until he's getting beaten by his own forearms because he still thinks he's the toughest Cape in the Bay. In the meantime, your father is still dead."

"What we're saying is that it might be a good idea for you to stay away from reporters for a while," Assault said. "They can be vindictive, and they'll look for any way they can to make you look terrible."

"The fact that you killed two Capes, for example is something that we have not yet disseminated to the general public," Armsmaster said. "Mostly because of the public perception issues and because they would likely use it against you."

"Why should I care about a group of bottom feeding hacks?" I asked.

"Because if they cause the Youth Guard to get involved, it'd possible that they'll bench you until things are worked out. We'd win in the end, but that would be time where you aren't training or fighting," Armsmaster said. "And I suspect that you wouldn't do well behind a desk or even at Console."

"I can do Console duty," I said. "Garrett told me that it was good tactical training, so that I could see the overall strategy of fights."

"That is why we assign Wards to console instead of simply using PRT agents," Armsmaster said. "Sometimes it's important to see the situation on the ground from a distance."

"But I wouldn't like to do it all the time," I said. "Fine. What do you want me to do?"

"We've got a public relations man who will work with you," Piggot said. "He's worked with politicians before. We've also asked your father to lend some of his experiences in the public realm."

"Wouldn't it just be easier for me to stop talking to the press?" I asked. "I was told that I wouldn't have to do most of the standing around and making nice that the rest of the Wards do."

"Have you ever been a soldier?" Piggot asked. She was looking flushed again.

"No?"

"I have. The movies make it look like war is a series of exciting battles, jumping from one to the next. Do you know what the main emotion soldiers suffer?"

"Fear?"

"Boredom. Military life is all about hurrying up and then waiting. Which of those do you think happens more often?"

"Yes, but I'm an asset," I said. "It'd be a wste for me to stand around when I could be getting stronger."

"The first two weeks of boot camp is spent learning to wear your uniform and clean your room," Piggot said. "Why is that?"

"Because military people are obsessive compulsives with power complexes?"

"It teaches discipline!" she said. She was standing now. "If it wasn't for discipline you'd never be able to trust the man standing beside you to have your back. If he can't even do something boring that he doesn't like for a few hours, how can you trust him not to run away when things get hot?"

"I'm not going to run," I said.

"And if we tell you _not_ to go after an Endbringer?" she asked. "Because people with two decades of experience know you aren't ready? Can we trust you to follow orders then?"

"I..." I said, then I stopped.

As much as I hated it, she might be right. I couldn't be sure that I wouldn't go after an Endbringer, not if I knew that people were dying while I sat on my hands. It might even mean that I died early.

"That's why I need to get as strong as I can as fast as I can," I said. "Which means I need to be out there fighting instead of in here talking about how I'm going to kiss reporter's asses!"

"So what is your plan?" Piggot asked. "Are you going to go up to Lung's door, knock on it and ask politely if he'll fight you?"

"I might," I said.

"How will you find him? He doesn't exactly put out his known address."

"I know exactly where he is," I said, shrugging. "I can sense life force, and Capes have more of it than anyone else. There aren't that many Capes down by the Docks, so I could fly over there right now, and it'd only take me a couple of tries at most to find him."

"And you haven't done it already why?"

"Well, if I get the kind of fight I want it'll probably leave a lot of the city on fire," I said. "I'd like to lure him outside of the city, where we could really go to town."

"At last!" Piggot said. "A glimmer of common sense. I was afraid that you were incapable of restraint and was going to ask that you go to Alexandria's training camp in Los Angeles."

"And now you aren't?" I asked. "Why are you punishing me?"

"It's a remedial camp," Piggot said. "For the worst of the worst."

I frowned. "I didn't think I was that bad."

"You seriously considered burning half the docks down just so that you could get a good fight! Most people wouldn't even have thought of that in the first place. That's not the action of a rational person."

"I said I wouldn't," I said. I frowned. "What about Strider? Why don't we have him teleport me and Lung to an island?"

"Strider is too important to the fight against the Endbringers. He could get killed very easily and then where would we be?"

"I need to fight," I said. "And soon. Fighting ordinary people won't do anything; it has to be a challenge."

"There aren't that many challenges that you could fight," Armsmaster said. "Either you clearly outmatch them, or they completely bypass your defenses, like Masters and wouldn't do much good anyway."

"Are we sure about that?" I asked. "Is it possible that I could develop a resistance to being Mastered if I was exposed to it enough."

Armsmaster looked intrigued. "It's possible, but testing that would certainly anger the Youth Guard."

"I'm just frustrated," I admitted.

"You aren't the only one," Piggot said. She rose to her feet. "The people in charge are making a lot of concessions for you, and I'm not certain they have your best interests at heart."

"Of course they don't," I said. "They want a weapon, and they want it soon. Alexandria told me they are looking for the Slaughterhouse Nine, and that they are hoping to use me against them."

She looked troubled. "That's not something I would have a fourteen year old girl face for any reason."

"I'm not sure I could fight the Siberian," I admitted, "But Crawler would be a perfect fight, under the right circumstances."

"Fighting things like that, it leaves scars," Piggot said. "And I'm not talking about ones that Panacea can heal. I've fought the Nilbog and I know."

"I wanted to fight the Nilbog too, but they tell me he's got fail safes, viruses that would kill millions of people if we went in."

"I'd love nothing more than to see that monster get what he deserves," Piggot said. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. "But that's an example of why you have to listen to the people in charge. If you didn't know about the doomsday trigger, would you have gone after him already?"

"Yes," I admitted. "I mean, I know exactly where he is."

"There are secrets that are held for reasons, and sometimes we don't attack because we don't know enough about the end results. You've heard of the Sleeper, haven't you?"

"Yes?" I asked.

"All our thinkers can come up with is that his power is so terrible that he should never, ever be woken up for any reason. Have you ever heard the term don't poke the bear?"

"Yes," I said slowly.

"You know what it means? It means don't poke the damn bear! There are reasons for our orders, and we aren't required to explain them to a fourteen year old with more power than she should have."

I lifted my hand. "Can we talk about something else?"

She was silent for a moment, then sighed. "Just think about what I said. The other thing on the agenda is getting you into Arcadia."

I perked up. Getting away from Emma would make my day to day life much more pleasant.

"It's been decided to move you and Sophia to Arcadia together," she said. At my expression, she said,"Sophia admitted to behaviors that aren't healthy for her, and likely not for you either. Most of them occurred before she joined the Wards."

I frowned. "You know she was one of my bullies."

"You seem to work with her well enough," she said. "And you had the opportunity to get some retribution toward her."

I shrugged. "She wasn't the worst of them, and now there's nothing she can do to me."

"It's not healthy for her to remain at Winslow," she said again. "She's made toxic friendships, and the constant presence of the gangs there is leading her into old behaviors."

"So she's sneaking out?" I asked.

"Putting her in Arcadia will give the other Wards a chance to keep an eye on her," Piggot said. "And it will give her a chance to see that not everyone is a gangster or a bully."

"You want me to keep an eye on her?" I asked incredulously. "After she treated me the way she did?"

"She respects you now," Piggot said. "More than any of the other Wards. You are the only one who has any leverage on her at all."

"So I'm going to be her warden," I said. "It's fitting, I guess."

"Getting you in won't be easy. Normally we don't like to do mid-semester transfers because it raises too many questions with people. With only two months left in the school year my preference would be to leave you where you are at and transfer you next year. It's be easier to get this Emma expelled from school. But with Sophia going down the path she has..."

"So what will I tell people?"

"That you were bullied and that you sued your school. It's close enough to the truth that no one will question it, and we've got a shapeshifter who we will dress up as you at a school assembly. Make sure you are there and people won't be suspicious."

I opened my mouth to respond, but as I did, we heard Dragon's voice suddenly play over the loudspeaker.

"I'm sorry to interrupt," she said.

Her voice was nicer than it was on the news; a virtual avatar appeared on the screen,

"Satellite images showed the Ash Beast has disappeared."

"What?"

The Ash Beast was one of a few S-class threats, a living ball of nuclear fire that destroyed everything he came into contact with. The last I'd heard he'd been wandering slowly around Africa, and most people had learned to simply avoid him.

"As of five minutes ago he reappeared ten miles outside of Brockton Bay," Dragon said. "He's heading straight for the city."

Alarms started ringing all over the building, not Endbringer alarms, but just as distracting.

Everyone was scrambling to their feet. I did as well.

While everyone else had expressions of dread, I felt only a rising excitement. Finally! A foe that I wouldn't have to fight with my eyes closed to make them challenging. Someone who I could finally use my newfound strength on without worrying about holding back.

It was said that no one had every beaten Ash Beast. After all, if they had, he'd be dead.

"I'm ready," I said.

Piggot stared at me with a hard expression. "I'd like to make you sit this one out for a lot of reasons... but I suspect that without you we'll lose more people than with with you. I can't make you fight this fight, and part of me wishes that you'd say no, but you won't, will you?"

I shook my head.

"This is the only way I can fulfill my purpose," I said. "If I can't beat the Ash Beast, I certainly can't beat the Endbringers."

"He might as well be an Endbringer," Piggot said. She scowled. "You have my permission, but you will follow orders. If we tell you to fall back, you will fall back. You won't charge headfirst into his fire just because you think it'll make you a little tougher."

I nodded curtly, even though neither of us really believed what I was saying. This was going to be my fight, and I was going to fight it my way, whatever anyone else thought.

Finally, a challenge!


	35. Shame

A blackened trail of flames and ash thirty feet wide showed where it had passed. There were still flames burning, although it had recently rained. Otherwise we might have more than just the Beasty itself to contend with.

I was flying, as was Kid Win, Aegis and Dad, who'd finally figured out how once I'd shown him. Below us, the rest were following along in all terrain vehicles. We weren't on roads and the PRT vans weren't designed to deal with this sort of terrain.

PRT officers were being deployed for crowd control, even though we hadn't yet reached the city. The one good thing about the Ash Beast was that it was slow; it maintained a walking pace rain or shine.

Would throwing it into the bay put it out, or would it simply irradiate all the sea life? I wasn't sure; it was one of the things I'd have to ask before I tried.

I didn't know a lot about the Ash Beast; I'd focused most of my studies on the parahumans of Brockton Bay and Boston; there were too many capes to worry about worldwide. I knew he was powerful enough that no one had ever stopped him, and that even attempts to divert him had rarely worked.

He'd been moved here, which meant it was possible. I had to wonder if it was Alexandria and her allies who had done it; after all, they'd promised me appropriate challenges, and here one was right on my doorstep. Yet it would have been easier to transport me to the Ash Beast surely rather than endanger an entire town.

According to Dragon, the Ash Beast was still five miles from town; it would take more than an hour to get there, assuming it kept to its current speed, which was something that history said it would.

I felt excited despite the fear that was on everyone else's faces. After all, this was my chance to to finally prove that I was more than a burden to everyone.

A glimmer of fire on the horizon was the first the rest of them saw of the Ash Beast. I'd been aware of it all along; its Ki blazed like the sun, so much power that I felt eclipsed by it. As I got closer, the differences in our power levels were becoming more apparent. If anything, it seemed to be stronger than Alexandria or even Eidolon.

How was I going to fight someone who was that strong? Was this why the Triumverate hadn't fought the Ash Beast before, because they feared that it would be another Siberian? Hero had died because they were overconfident and unprepared.

If I got out of this, I was going to make an in-depth study of all of the strongest capes I could find out about, starting with the S-class threats.

This wasn't the fight I was expecting, but I was starting to think that those kinds of fights were the exception rather than the rule. The Protectorate tended to play a defensive game, waiting for the villains to make the first move before attacking. As long as I associated myself with them, that was what I had to expect.

"Get ready," Dad said grimly.

Looking over at him, I was reminded again that this wasn't the life he had wanted. He'd given up all hope of getting stronger so that we could have an ordinary life, but here he was about to face an S-class threat.

As we got closer, I realized that I really couldn't see who or what was on the inside; it really did look like a living ball of flame moving slowly across the grass. Whoever was inside could presumably see; since he was heading purposefully toward the city, although it was possible that he had some sort of thinker ability like I did.

In any case, he didn't seem to take much notice of us. He simply kept moving.

I could sense where his body was inside the flame with my Ki sense, even though it was as bright as the sun.

"Let's end this as quickly as we can," Dad said, glancing at me. "No showboating, and no drawing it out for a good fight."

Apparently Piggot and the others had told him about my attitude in the meeting and he didn't approve. He'd warned me about just how many of our ancestors had fallen to hubris, but I felt compelled to move forward anyway.

After all, Alexandria believed in me! She'd told me that I was the chosen one, the one girl who was going to save the whole world. It was like being told you were Buffy by Superman.

I'd spent a year being a nobody at school; less than nobody, a nonentity. People who would have and should have been my friends turned and walked the other way when they saw me being abused.

Was it any wonder that I was enjoying my first taste of power and importance? I'd idolized Alexandria, and she'd told me I was necessary for the survival of mankind.

All of this had given me back my life. My father had vanished ever since Mom died, at home physically, but emotionally a black pit. I'd needed him, and he wasn't there. This, though had brought him back to life. It had woken him and brought him back to me in a way I'd thought was no longer possible.

Like Lazarus he'd been dead and now he was alive.

Getting Garrett as part of the deal was a bonus. He was like the big brother I'd never had. Even Leet was better than nothing, and this had finally gotten Sophia off my back.

I was going to Arcadia soon, and Emma would be a distant memory. This power was responsible for all of it, and the only way I could get more of it was by fighting. I could finally take all of the rage that I'd always been told wasn't appropriate for girls and I could give it a healthy outlet.

Turning every taunt by Emma into something good was the ultimate way to fight back. Even my anger at my own mother's death... anger at her, anger at myself, all of it bound together in a confusing morass that I wasn't sure I was capable to untangling.

Every parahuman needs psychological help; I'd heard Armsmaster say that once, and I'd dismissed it. After all, wasn't I the picture of mental health despite the torture that I'd endured, both by Emma and by the Empire?

But after what I'd done to Night I had to wonder if I didn't have something wrong inside of me. I was powerful, and I enjoyed that power, but I'd beaten her to death. The Empire had done that to me, and I hadn't enjoyed it at all.

"Everyone will fire from a distance," Armsmaster's voice said in my helmet. "No one is to approach."

From the look of the fire, I doubted that anyone but me would even be able to get close enough to do any kind of combat other than me. Missile attacks were all that we had.

Miss Militia was on top of one of the SUV's now, and the weapon that was appearing in her hand was larger than anything I'd seen before. Was this what she'd used on me in my monkey form?

I didn't know, but it didn't matter.

"Fire," Armsmaster said.

I began blasting away, and Dad beside me was doing the same. Kid Wynn was wielding some kind of rifle and so was Armsmaster down below. Even Gallant was lashing out with his emotion control beams, although I couldn't imagine what emotion he was trying to elicit.

Nothing. There was an explosion and the smoke was blinding, but I could feel his Ki as strong as it had ever been. The only change was a change in direction as the Ash Beast started walking toward us.

At least we were drawing him away from the city.

"Again," Armsmaster said.

Again the fire and fury lashed out, and again there was no effect.

"KA ME HA ME HA!" I yelled as I drew power into myself. This no longer exhausted me the way it once had, and according to Armsmaster it was now as powerful as the largest military rail gun. I pushed the energy outward, and as it struck, it left a crater around the Ash Beast.

It took me a moment to realize it, but finally I yelled, "Stop!"

The firing became sporadic and then ceased.

"We're making him stronger," I said. "He's absorbing the energy we're feeding him."

I could read it clearly through his Ki.

"What should we do," Kid Winn asked.

"Drop a rock on his head," I said. "The biggest one we can manage."

The PRT didn't have a lot of information on what had been tried on the Ash Beast before, partially because the African warlords were clannish and secretive about what they were doing. The one thing that was known was that nothing anyone had tried had worked.

Hadn't anyone tried simply dropping a rock on him?

"I'd like permission to go to the junkyard," I said. "And crush as many cars together as I can. I'll drop them on him, and maybe it will kill him before his flames can melt through the metal."

"Do it," Armsmaster said.

I was off like a flash; it took less than a minute to reach the junkyard, and I spent the next ten minutes crushing cars using Ki. I could hear the sounds of the others trying things; Kid Wynn and Armsmaster were trying projectile weapons but everything melted before they reached the center of the sphere.

When I reached one hundred cars, I stopped and I lifted the ball. It was twenty foot in diameter and weighed about a hundred and fifty tons. I could have compressed it more, but at some point either I wouldn't have the strength to compress it any more, or fusion would commence, in which case we'd have bigger problems than the Ash Beast.

A moment later I was in the air, the ball held above me.

By the time I reached them, it was clear that the Ash Beast had turned back toward town and was a mile closer. It was only two miles away from the edge of town, and it was ignoring everyone as being unable to affect it.

Perfect.

It's usual pattern was to walk through a town, setting fires and gobbling up matter like a demented Pac Man; often the fires that it started destroyed far more of a town than it ever did directly. It was a natural disaster in the form of a parahuman, and it never seemed to stop.

Did it still even have a consciousness in there, or was it a mindless creature driven mad by its condition?

Either way it didn't matter. If I killed it I would have stopped a major threat to the planet.

I flew until I was directly overhead, and then I threw the ball directly toward the center of the ball of flame and fury. It hit with a monstrous crash, deafening me for a moment. I had no doubt that people all over town had heard it.

There was a sudden silence, and the flame seemed to vanish.

I could hear some of the Wards cheering. The Protectorate members didn't say anything.

Had I killed it? I focused on my Ki sense, and I frowned. Its Ki had dimmed, but it had not vanished. It was getting stronger and stronger now.

"Guys," I said uneasily, and the cheering stopped.

The sphere of metal exploded, striking me with hot gobbets of metal. I could hear screaming from behind me as hot metal struck some of the others, who weren't as tough as I was.

Dad's Ki seemed to be ok, but I saw grass fires being started everywhere that the molten metal had landed. The entire thing had exploded in a half a mile radius, and I quickly realized that this was going to be a problem.

"Get everyone out," I said. I grimaced.

It was always going to come to this. I had to go in there, no matter how painful it was going to be. That was the only way that this was going to end. I'd either die, or I'd win. Either way, this would be over with.

Everyone had always seen the Ash Beast as the immovable object, the thing that anyone and anything would break upon. I was going to have to put that to the test.

"Taylor, no!" Dad shouted.

He'd obviously intuited what I planned to do, but he couldn't stop me. I had to save everyone or everything I'd been told was a lie.

I took a deep breath and I pushed, flashing downwards as quickly as I could. Even an ordinary person could survive open flames if they moved fast enough. I just had to move fast enough to kill the person at the center of the flames and then they would die out.

Pain.

My world was suddenly about more pain than I'd ever experienced before. It made the beating I'd suffered from the ABB, the torture from the Empire, all of it was nothing compared to what I was feeling now.

I was suspended inside the Ash Beast, and it was like I was a fly trapped in amber. I could no longer think or feel anything other than the desire to get away, but I could not pull away.

Every moment felt like an eternity, and I screamed and screamed until my voice was gone. I could feel my skin burning, blackening away, and my hair catching fire. I went mercifully blind, and shortly after that I went deaf.

All I wanted to do was die, and shortly after that even the pain vanished as my nerve endings burned away.

I was left in an unending void, lost and alone. Was this how I was going to die?

I hadn't saved anyone, not really. I hadn't met the grand destiny that I'd been promised. I hadn't been anything other than a fool who was drunk on her own power.

How was I still thinking? Wasn't I dead yet, or was this some version of hell that I'd never thought about.

Was I going to be trapped here forever, unable to move or do anything but think about the many many mistakes I had made?

I hadn't fallen in love. I hadn't told Dad just how much it meant that he was back in my life. I hadn't even properly told Sophia just how much what she'd done had hurt me.

There were so many experiences I'd missed, things I hadn't seen. If I only had a second chance I'd have done things better.

I'd have found a different way to deal with the Ash Beast. Obviously simply jumping in wasn't always the best thing to do when you were dealing with someone who was much stronger than you were.

Fighting smarter not harder; I'd been told that by Dad and Garrett and I'd never listened. Having all the power in the world meant that you didn't have to worry about tactics or strategy; at least that is what I'd thought.

My father had showed me comics from before Scion about two iconic superheroes who represented both sides of the spectrum.

It was the difference between Superman and Batman. Superman let people shoot him in the eye because he was so powerful that it didn't matter. Batman was full of strategy and plans and he always had something up his sleeves.

How dangerous would Superman be if he behaved like Batman? Would anyone be able to beat him?

That was who I was going to have to be if I wanted to beat Scion, assuming I got the chance.

There was a light, suddenly, and moments later I heard a sound.

"I'm doing my best to keep both of them stable," I heard Panacea's voice. "But I'm going to have to make a choice soon. I can't keep both of them alive. Right now both of them have multiple organ failure, and it's a full time job just putting out fires."

"You need to make a choice," I heard her say. "Which one do you want me to save?"

Had someone else sacrificed themselves for me?

They'd bring me back; I knew it. They couldn't afford not to, not with my importance to their master plan. That meant that someone else was going to die saving me.

I'd killed a hero, and all because of the hubris that Dad had warned and warned me about.

I suddenly felt an emotion that I wasn't used to feeling, one that I hadn't really felt since I'd learned that I was responsible for Mom's death.

Shame.

I'd been a fool, a child given a loaded handgun. I'd strutted around like I knew what I was doing. Who had I killed?

Was it Dad, Sophia, Armsmaster?

Suddenly I felt pain again, and it was clear what decision they'd made. My nerves were growing back, and Panacea wasn't shutting off my pain receptors. She knew that I deserved any pain I could get, and she was giving it to me.

I'd never be able to make up for what I'd done, but the least I could do was try. I was going to have to be the kind of hero that I'd always wanted to be, someone who stood up for what was right instead of what was convenient.

I needed to become Legend and not Alexandria, as much as I admired her.

The pain seemed to last an eternity before it finally faded away. I still couldn't see much, but it was because my eyes were closed, which meant that I had eyelids again.

"Wake up," Panacea said.

I did.


	36. Thinking

Panacea was standing over me, looking exhausted.

"Did we win?" I asked. My voice felt raspy and raw, and I wondered why she hadn't healed this along with everything else. I still had aches and pains, which seemed like shoddy work compared to what I'd had from her in the past.

She scowled at me. "Not thanks to you."

I stared at her, and she relented.

"The Ash Beast disappeared about five minutes after you decided that jumping into a nuclear fireball was a wonderful idea. From what I've overheard, they think that the whole thing might have been an attempt to kill you specifically. They were talking about the Chinese, maybe? I was a little busy and wasn't really listening."

"So everyone is all right?" I said.

I'd heard that the Chinese had people with my power set and were trying to breed them. Were they threatened by the idea that the Americans had one of their own? Even if I agreed to some sort of gross breeding program, I was only fourteen, and I wouldn't be having children for a while.

"I don't know," she said. "There were a lot of injuries, from what I saw, people burned by molten metal, one kid whose face and hands had burns on them that looked pretty bad, but I was told to devote my time specifically to you, no matter how much of a dumb ass you are."

She seemed really hostile toward me for some reason, and I wasn't sure why.

"I've just spend the last three hours working on you; it was a miracle that you survived at all." Panacea said. "You were the closest to just being a skeleton that it's possible to be without actually dying."

"I'm sorry?" I said. I wasn't sure what she wanted me to say. I couldn't change what I had done; I could only try to do better in the future.

"You should be," she said. "You didn't have any skin left and your helmet was melted to your head. You had multiple organ failures all at the same time, and I couldn't repair one because the others were failing. It was like juggling, and I'm exhausted."

Panacea looked angry.

"I can understand you getting hurt in a fight; that kind of thing happens, But throwing yourself in like that? That's the dumbest thing I've ever seen anyone do."

"I thought I was tough enough to make it," I admitted.

"And you wonder why they don't want you at Endbringer fights," she snorted. At my look, she said "My sister is dating one of the Wards and they talk."

I scowled. The fact that she was probably right didn't make it any easier to hear, especially from someone who wasn't out on the front lines fighting.

"I was tempted to leave you bald," she said. "Teach you a lesson, but apparently you've got a secret identity, and so I did you the courtesy. Do something like this again, and not only will I not regrow your hair, I'll leave you permanently bald all over."

I held up my hands in a conciliatory gesture. "I understand how dumb this was. It hurt like hell."

"You didn't even have any nerve endings toward the end," Panacea said. "I'm serious about you not doing something like this again."

"I've sworn off being stupid," I said.

"If you knew how many times I've heard that from my sister," Panacea said. "But you've got no idea how close you came to dying. I wasn't sure I was going to be able to save you, and I'm still not sure it wasn't a miracle that you survived."

I tried to sit up and I felt the bed groan beneath me. Instinctively I reinforced it with Ki, much like I'd been doing to tables and chairs I'd rested on. I was stronger again, and it felt like more than a simple doubling in strength.

There wasn't any way to know how strong I was without testing, but I had an uneasy feeling that I had other things to worry about.

"Is my Dad dead?" I asked quietly. There was a knotted feeling in my gut, and I wasn't sure I wanted the answer, especially from panacea, who looked like any sympathy she'd had for me had vanished the moment she'd looked at my skinless body.

She looked at me and then shook her head. "I don't know. I couldn't save both of you, and so they took him away. I think they had a plan, but as for whether it worked or not, I don't know."

"Who can I talk to?" I asked.

"I'll make some calls," she said. "I was too busy trying to keep you alive to pay much attention to what they were doing."

I closed my eyes, and I reached out with my powers. I could recognize people by their Ki signatures, if I knew them well enough.

My Ki sense had expanded vastly; I could feel part of a city to the south that had to be Boston, something I hadn't been able to feel before at all. It took me a while to find the signatures I was looking for.

"Where are my clothes?" I asked as I rose to my feet. I was completely nude under my blanket.

Panacea stepped back. Apparently she'd heard about what I'd done to the hospital bed the last time.

"They were burned off of you," Panacea said cautiously. "We couldn't even cover you with a sheet or a gown for a while because you didn't have any skin... and if you think that wasn't a nightmare, fighting off all the infections..."

"I'm about to fly nude through the city," I said. "Either get me something to wear, or get out of my way."

She hesitated, then said, "There are paper gowns on the chair on the other side of the bed.

Once I would have been embarrassed to be nude even in front of another female, but she'd seen every inch of my body from the inside. I walked around the bed and grabbed a gown.

I looked back at her, and she looked quickly away. It almost looked like she was blushing.

"You and your father are interesting," she said. "not like any other parahumans I've ever seen. I haven't been able to find your gemma or your corona, but there are structures inside all of your cells that aren't remotely human. I'd have thought you were Case 53's, except you look human... except for the tail, and you've got all your memories."

I stiffened, and carefully reached behind myself. "Do I have a tail again?"

She shook her head. "The first time I healed you I didn't figure you'd want it, so I kept it from growing. This time, well, I've heard what happens with it, and I made even more sure to not give it to you."

I nodded, relieved. The last thing I needed was to become an even stronger monkey by moonlight.

Before she could say anything I was already out the door. I kept one hand behind me, keeping the back of the gown closed, and it took me only a moment to find the exit door. I was getting depressingly familiar with this hospital.

Moments after that I was flying up the stairwell, onto the roof, and then I was in the sky.

I held the paper gown only by sheer force of will, and I flew so fast that I doubt anyone would have seen me. I landed heavily outside Leet's warehouse, the doors opening automatically as the system read my eye prints.

I slipped through into the back, where their living quarters were, and I found an old set of sweats that Garrett had recently laundered. Leet hadn't bothered to go high tech with his washer or dryer, possibly because Garrett was the one who tended to do the laundry.

I stepped into them, dropping the paper gown into the trash, and then I took a deep breath.

Leet had never let me into his lab, and he had to have a reason for it, yet the answers I was seeking were down there.

I went to the door, and I rapped on it three times.

Garrett was there almost immediately. They probably were alerted when anyone came to the door; at least that was how I would have designed the system.

"Come down," he said.

I stepped down a small stairway that went further down than I would have thought. Leet's lab was forty feet below the surface, and I gaped as I saw it for the first time. It dwarfed the building up above, probably covering the entire block. There was no way they owned all of this property, which meant that they'd simply built under other people's land without telling them.

Was this why Leet had never let me down here?

Garrett led me through crowded tables covered in equipment and half finished projects. Some I recognized from high school science classes and others looked like things I'd seen in science fiction movies.

In the corner I saw what looked like Robbie the robot, and I wasn't sure whether it was a prop from the movie or an actual reproduction that was functional. I also saw a partially completed Iron Man robot. I'd heard about this one, and it actually looked pretty cool.

There was Storm trooper armor, light saber prototypes, even a familiar looking broomstick. The place looked more like a special effects department than a working laboratory.

This wasn't even the only room. I could feel Leet on a level below us, moving around. How far down did this place go, and how did they keep the water table from flooding the place?

We wound our way through tightly packed tables and eventually we reached the back of the lab.

There was a tank that rose from the floor to the ceiling. It had a liquid inside it, an it was glowing. There was a figure inside who looked like something out of a horror movie. I could see the bones of his skull and organs were visible in places. The figure was unrecognizable.

The Ki was my Dad's.

"What happened?" I asked softly.

"He went in after you," Garrett said. "Holding Armsmaster's halberd. Clockblocker was holding the other end, and he froze both of you while the others attacked the Ash Beast from the other side, drawing it away. Clockblocker froze parts of his armor to protect himself, but the radiant heat still burned him badly on his face and his arms."

He looked up at the ruined horror that was my father. "You looked worse than he does if you can believe it. I still can't believe that you survived as long as you did. You had to have been there for more than a minute while he was only in there for a few seconds."

I'd looked worse than that?

"Even your Dad was a lot tougher than I thought. The heat melted Armsmaster's halberd before Clockblocker could freeze it. He said he was going to use Ki to protect himself, and I guess it worked, kind of."

"How did he even survive to get here?" I asked, staring up at Dad. If he'd been a zombie I'd have wonderd how he was staying together.

"Panacea could only take one of you, so Leet used his transporter to get your Dad into the Bacta tank. We haven't had a chance to try it on injuries anywhere this bad, but Leet thought it might keep him alive long enough for Panacea to take a look at him."

His Ki was a flickering whisper, the barest glimmer of light, but I'd felt it from all the way across the city.

"Nobody got out of this unwounded," Garrett said. "That molten metal that flew everywhere almost put Vista's eye out. Even those with armor suffered burns due to conduction heat, and those with exposed body parts did even worse."

I was feeling worse and worse all the time. Dad had jumped into hell to save me from my own stupidity, and the things I had done had maimed my own teammates.

Garrett looked me in the eye. "You understand that you almost died, right?"

I nodded miserably.

"That happens sometimes when you are a hero; it can't be avoided. But dying stupid is the worst way to go. If you have to die, don't you want it to mean something?"

I stared at the ground.

"Your father isn't able to say any of this right now, and hopefully he'll be able to soon, but if you don't stop and think, you are going to get someone killed... someone you actually care about. I know that's a small group, but it's going to happen."

I looked up, shocked. "I care about people!"

"Who? Your Dad...me maybe?"

I opened my mouth to protest, but I froze. Was he right? Did I not really care about hardly anyone? Was that why I had been acting the way I had been?

"It's not healthy to not have connections to people," he said. "Especially if you are someone with a lot of power. What happens if your Dad dies, if I die? Will you give a damn what happens to anyone else if that happens?"

"I'll protect people," I said sullenly.

"For how long?" he asked. "How long before it'll feel better to throw your weight around and make people do what you want?"

I wasn't sure what he wanted me to say.

"How long before you start thinking that you are the only one who matters? It's pretty easy to lose empathy for other people, and if you lose that, the next thing you know, you're the next Crawler."

I stared at him, hurt. Did he really think I had it in me to become one of the Nine? Or was he saying that anyone had it in them, if they were left along long enough.

"You know I've been doing some consulting work for the PRT," he said. "Helping get their training into shape. It's a nice side gig that helps make a little more money."

I nodded.

Leet was supposed to lease time on his holodeck to the PRT for training, although he refused to join because of all the restrictions placed on Tinkers. Both of them had their minor crimes expunged as a result, and they were supposed to try to stay clean and legal.

Leet was excited about adapting his iron giant rig into other applications; he was building an Iron Man suit that he could remotely pilot; it was a way for him to get all of the fun of being a hero without any of the danger. There was some concern about him violating copyright laws... or was it Trademarks? I always got the two confused.

"I've suggested that they get you counseling," Garrett said.

"What?" My head snapped up. "No... I'm fine."

"You haven't really dealt with the death of your mother," Garrett said. "You were on the phone with her when she died. You were beaten by ABB thugs who planned to kill you and film it. You were tortured for two hours... and you've killed people."

"I don't need to see a shrink," I protested.

"Not a psychiatrist," he said. "I'm not sure how psychiatric medications would affect your body, although their may be Tinkers or thinkers who can figure it out. I'm just talking about having someone to talk to who won't judge you."

"They'll have to report to the PRT," I said. "How can I talk to someone I can't trust not to Narc on me if I tell them I feel like killing Piggot sometimes."

"Well," he said. "Any of them would have to tell if you seriously planned on killing someone. I can recommend someone for you who doesn't work for the PRT and who is trustworthy."

"How do you know?" I asked suspiciously.

"She was my therapist when I was younger,' he said.

I stared at him. "What?"

He smiled self deprecatingly. "I wasn't always the amazing person I am today. I was bullied a lot when I was a kid, because I liked a lot of things the other kids didn't, and my family life wasn't always the best. Miss Monica Rainier really helped me put things in perspective."

Frowning, I stared at him. "And she wouldn't tell the PRT what I told her?"

"Not without a court order," he said. "And if they didn't know who you were seeing they couldn't subpoena her records. It'd mean that you'd have to pay in cash, but the good thing is that she's in Providence, Rhode Island, which is far enough not to be obvious, but is an easy flight down for you."

I shook my head. "I'm still not sure I should do that..."

"You can either do it willingly, on your own terms, or they'll make you. However strong you are now, Alexandria is stronger, and they can force you to go. But if you just sit in the chair and refuse to talk for forty five minutes or an hours you aren't going to get much out of it."

I was silent for a long moment.

Finally I spoke. "All right, I'll do it."

"That's good," he said. He looked up at the Bacta tank. "Panacea will eventually be dropping by to deal with your Dad, but we've got to get him healthy enough to come out of the tank. The way he is now, there's a good chance he'd die before she could get her hands on him. Getting him healthy enough is going to take a while."

I looked around for a chair. Finding one, I pulled it over to sit in front of the tank.

"I'll wait," I said.

He looked at me for a moment, and then nodded. "I'll make the arrangements."

"I've got some thinking to do anyway," I said.


	37. Temptation

Dad looked gaunt, almost skeletal, but he had skin in all the places he was supposed to have it, and Panacea had even grown hair in his bald spot. It had taken three days for him to be healthy enough to leave the Bacta tank for treatment, and apparently she had regained her good humor in that time.

Or maybe she blamed me but not him. She'd left my hair short, which I suspected was an intentional dig at me; after all, I'd always thought my hair was my one good feature.

Dad' had still been bad enough when he came out of the tank that it had taken her more than an hour to finish with him; apparently she was using some kind of biomass to replace his missing flesh, a concoction supplied by Leet that she seemed intrigued by.

"How long until he wakes up?" I asked.

"It'll happen when it happens," she said. She looked tired, but not nearly as tired as she had when she'd finished healing me. "He literally threw himself into a fire, so his mind may not want to face waking up just yet."

"My mind worked just fine," I said.

"Yes, and you are a freak of nature," she said. "You know that the normal response to being burned is to pull back, right?"

"I thought I could take it," I said. "And I didn't want to let everyone else down."

Panacea was silent for a moment. "You had to have been in an incredible amount of pain; didn't it occur to you to back off and try something else?"

"My muscles seized up," I admitted.

"Don't you fly by willpower?" she asked. "Why didn't you do that?"

I stared at her. Backing away had never even occurred to me, not even when I was dying. Was that a flaw endemic to my family? Was that why so many of them had died horribly over the centuries? Or was it something wrong with me?

Finally I shrugged. "It didn't occur to me."

"Try running away next time... you might actually get to fight again if you don't actually die." She froze suddenly, sniffed and then wrinkled her nose. "You need a bath."

"I've been sitting here for the last three days," I said. "Just in case he should wake up. I owe him that much."

I'd missed a day of school, but I doubted Dad would care about that. The important thing was that he was alive and that he would continue to be alive. The thought that I might have lost him, that it would have been my fault... again... I'm not sure what I would have done, but I doubted it would have been good.

"I was surprised not to see you at the Simurgh attack in Germany on Saturday," Panacea said. He glanced at my Dad.

"Nobody told me," I said, surprised.

It was probably for the best considering the state of mind I was in. I no longer felt like the invincible powerhouse I'd once thought I was, but I was still probably powerful enough to kill most Capes. Letting the Simurgh get into my head wasn't a good idea.

Before the Ash Beast I'd have insisted on going, no matter what; now I only felt relieved.

I suspected that Garrett had chosen not to tell me, probably because he hadn't wanted me to be torn between my duty and my family. Maybe he'd been afraid that I would be enough of an idiot that I'd go rushing out to fight something that was stronger than Alexandria without thinking about it.

Never again.

There might be times where I was forced to fight beings stronger than I was, but never again would I simply rush in without a plan. The Protectorate had a wealth of experience in parahuman tactics, experience that I could squeeze out of them, assuming that I could ever get them to forgive me.

I felt ashamed; the thought of going back and facing Armsmaster and the other Wards was excruciating. They'd tried to tell me I was wrong, but I hadn't listened. Even standing here under Panacea's judging gaze was intensely uncomfortable.

I blinked as I realized that Panacea was no longer looking at me. She was staring at the Bacta tank.

Leet and Garrett had set up fake walls all around us to that it looked like we were in a nondescript room. They'd done a good job at making this place look like any other hospital room, although all it would take was a good push to knock one of the walls down. Even Panacea probably could have done it. They'd warned me repeatedly not to lean against the walls or let her do it.

The only technology that was out of place was the Bacta tank in the corner. They'd teleported Panacea directly into the room and she had no idea where we were now. I wasn't sure if they were going to all this effort because they didn't trust Panacea, or simply because they were afraid that she would have blabbed about some of the things she saw in the lab.

I was proof that a teenage girl could be trusted not to say anything... although I hadn't actually had a chance to leave the lab yet. Did Leet think I was going to run to my non-existent friends and gossip about him?

"I wouldn't have thought your father would have made it three minutes, much less three days. If your friends could mass manufacture those things I might be out of business."

There was almost a sound of longing in her voice.

"No," I said. "The tank could keep him alive, but without you or someone like you Dad would have ended up a quadriplegic, requiring artificial limbs."

Leet had been quite emphatic about that, before yelling at me for being crazy and an idiot. It was almost enough to make me think that he actually cared.

"Which your friend could no doubt build," she said. "Even so, this is an amazing breakthrough that could help a lot of people. Why haven't we seen this in every hospital?"

"He's still got to maintain all this stuff," I said. "He can't mass produce things like that one Tinker."

Technically his machines could make all of them he wanted; maintaining them was an entirely different story. Garrett said that Leet had nightmares about being forced to do nothing but maintain his own machines day after day, year after year, never building anything new again.

The Bacta tanks were exactly the kind of things people would expect him to give up his life for. Day after day, a never-ending horde of needy people with expectations. It would be enough to break anyone.

I glanced at Panacea. Was that what it was like for Panacea? Swarmed by the sick, overwhelmed like someone being clawed at by zombies, yet unable to stop because people would always expect more?

Maybe this was why Leet was being so cautious. All it would take was for Panacea to say something in the wrong ear, and the Protectorate would try to take this. They'd try to force him too. It was a sign of just how much Dad meant to him that he would even make the effort.

At least Leet getting to enjoy going out as a hero using his remote piloted devices. It was just dangerous enough to be thrilling without the risk of actually dying.

"Dragon?"

It took me a moment to realize who she was talking about. Oh... the Tinker. Who was the mass production guy? I couldn't quite remember. I wasn't likely to ever have to fight him, so I hadn't paid that much attention to him.

"No, the other one."

"Maybe he should work with that guy," Panacea said. "Build a few hundred of these, and you'd change the world."

"That would probably get him a visit from the Slaughterhouse," I said. "You've heard that Mannequin goes after Tinkers who make a difference."

Considering that Leet wasn't the bravest man around, even with his remote controlled avatars, I doubted that he'd be willing to make himself that kind of target.

Panacea shuddered and looked down.

"Even telling people about this might bring them here," I said. I might as well do Leet a favor after everything he had done for me. Especially since what I was saying was true. "After all, I've heard that the PRT has a lot of leaks."

Panacea scowled. "You think they won't be coming when they hear about the giant monkey?"

"I'm going to fight them sooner or later," I said. "And if the Siberian beat Alexandria, I doubt there's anything I'll be able to do against him."

"Kill them," she said suddenly. "People like that deserve to die."

I stared at her, startled. Where had that come from?

"What?"

"The things they do... create monsters, turn people into _things_... they might as well be the Simurgh, but they've actually got souls."

"I think Bonesaw would be jealous," I said without thinking.

"What?" she asked. The color drained from her face.

"Of your power," I said. "I mean she can do surgery but you can just touch people and make things happen right away, much easier than she can."

"I can't make monsters," she whispered.

"You stopped me from growing a tail," I said. "That means you could actually make me grow a tail if you wanted to."

"I'll give you a bald spot and a pot belly if you don't shut up!" she snapped. "Comparing me to Bonesaw... you might as well say that I'm a better artist than Hitler."

"Well aren't you?" I asked. "His art was probably pretty crappy, or he'd have become an artist instead of a genocidal dictator."

"You don't compare people to Hitler, or Bonesaw or any of the Nine," she insisted. "It's like saying that I could be one of the Nine if I just went a little bad."

"You don't I'd be good at being one of the Nine?" I asked quietly.

"What?" she asked, startled.

"I'm powerful... more so now than ever. I don't have a lot of friends or a lot of connections. If Dad and Gar... Uber died who would I have to care about? Even after what just happened to me I like to fight, and I've got a lot of anger in me that's just waiting to be let out. Doesn't that sound like a perfect candidate?"

She stared at me.

"I could end the world," she said finally. "All it. It'd be easy. Take someone with the flu, twist it around a little... make it always fatal, highly infectious, but not showing symptoms for a month so that they'd spread it far and wide. Do you see why I never want the Slaughterhouse to even think about me?"

Now it was my turn to stare. "You'd never do that, would you?"

She was silent for a long, uncomfortable moment. "I have nightmares about it sometimes... about the Earth becoming a graveyard with me as the only survivor. I can kill the viruses and bacteria that contact me so I'd be fine... alone for the rest of my life."

Free was the word she always seemed to be wanting to say. Free of expectations, free of the constant demands people placed on her.

"Don't worry," I said. "I'll kill you before I let you go down that path."

She looked up at me and she said, "You would, wouldn't you."

For the first time she smiled. It seemed like an odd response to someone claiming they were going to kill you, but maybe I'd said something right?

"I'll kill you too," she said. "If you ever threaten the world."

We were both silent for a long time, a silence that was growing increasingly uncomfortable.

"Did Leet participate in the fight?" I asked, as much to find something to fill the silence as out of any real interest.

"Yeah. He went as a robot painted red and gold," she said. "He got his head knocked off early in the fight, and the Simurgh pulled his arms and legs off and used them to beat other people."

To Leet it would have been like losing at a video game, other than the inconvenience of having to rebuild his avatar. From what I was hearing, his machines were doing most of the rebuilding these days anyway.

He still had to do the maintenance, which was an inconvenience to him, since he was always interested in building new things instead of refining the old ones.

"I'm sorry for what I put everyone through," I said, after a another long moment of silence. "I'm going to do better."

"I hope you are better at that than my sister," Panacea said, looking frustrated, "although she never tried to burn herself alive either."

"Well," I said. "I'm stronger now at least... and not just a little stronger. That's something at least."

Panacea looked at me strangely. "I'm glad my sister doesn't have your power. She'd be doing all kinds of idiotic things to get stronger."

"Like jumping into a fire without sticking a hand in to see if you can take it?" I asked.

"Maybe a finger next time," she said. "One you don't need."

"Like this one?" I asked, flipping her off.

"This is Brockton Bay," she said dryly. "That's your most important finger."

We both chuckled. She seemed a little less hostile than she had when the conversation first started, and I wasn't really sure why. Maybe this was part of my being bad with people; even when I did something tight I didn't know what I had done, which meant that I couldn't repeat it.

I'd certainly done things wrong often enough without knowing what I'd done. If I'd been more socially skilled would I have been able to turn Emma back into herself again? I still had no idea why she turned from my sweet friend into a raging bitch.

Maybe Sophia knew. If she was still talking to me, maybe I could get her to spill the beans, or at least explain what I had done wrong. She was just cruel enough that she wouldn't worry about sparing my feelings, and I wasn't sure that she was even talking to Emma any more, so there might not be loyalty there.

"Thanks again for what you did for me and my Dad," I said after another awkward silence. "I really am going to try to be a different kind of hero."

"Even when you are as strong as Alexandria?"

"Oh, I'm going to be stronger than her," I assured her. "Otherwise, what's the point of all of this? You don't think I jumped in the fire just because I'm stupid, do you?"

She looked at me like I was crazy. "I thought you were an arrogant power junkie," she admitted finally.

"Maybe I was..." I said. Truthfully, for all my regret I couldn't say that I wasn't going to keep grabbing for power. It was all I had that I was good at. "But I'm planning on being a smart power junkie in the future. Well, smarter at least."

"I'm glad to hear that," I heard a weak voice say from the bed.

My head snapped around to look at Dad. He looked weak and exhausted, even though I suspected that he too was a lot stronger than he had been. Panacea had been forced to use his bodies reserves to rebuild him, which meant both of us were going to have to eat a lot over the next few days.

"You nearly got us both killed, Kiddo," he said. "Even after I told you what was going to happen."

His voice wasn't judgmental, but he looked like he could barely keep his eyes open. He looked vastly tired, more than I had been when I'd woken from Panacea's ministrations. Was that because he'd been hurt worse, or was he feeling more depressed than I was?

It hadn't been long since he'd barely been able to go to work in the aftermath of Mom's death. He'd regained his zest for life since I'd started all of this; the thought that I might have started him sliding down that path again was terrifying.

I nodded, then looked down at my hands. "I'm really sorry."

Looking him in the eye was almost impossible. I wanted Dad to think well of me more than anyone, and this had to have been a huge disappointment. He'd predicted everything that had happened when he told me about his family, about all the things that he'd left behind to be with Mom.

Yet if anyone could understand the temptations I was under, it had to be him. He had to be much stronger now, and it was possible that it was like giving alcohol to a drunk who hadn't had any in thirty years.

All we had was each other.

I reached out finally and grabbed his hand. He didn't flinch, even though I'd probably have crushed a normal person's hand.

I had a feeling I'd be saying sorry a lot over the next few days. The Wards, the Protectorate... I'd cost Armsmaster a Halberd, I'd almost lost Dad.

Getting stronger wasn't going to be enough. I needed to get smarter too, smart enough that I could protect everyone. After all, Alexandria wasn't just a brute, she was one of the smartest Capes around. I'd forgotten about that for a while.

I wasn't going to forget it again.


	38. Camp

"Ten times as strong," Armsmaster said. "Impressive."

Unlike the others, he'd been nothing but professional with me. He hadn't shown any resentment that I'd caused his Halberd to be destroyed, or that I'd caused him to be burned on the face where his armor didn't cover.

I was strong enough now to lift a submarine into the air, which in the normal course of events was more than strong enough for anything I'd need to do. How much stronger could I possibly need to get.

"Alexandria is less than five hundred times as strong as you are now," he said. "Should you continue on your current course and not get yourself killed, you will outstrip her eventually."

"Assuming anyone wants to talk to me," I said glumly.

There had been a time that the other Wards had feared me; now they were ostracizing me, all except Sophia. She'd managed to shadow out of the way of the gobbets of burning metal, and so hadn't been injured like the others had been.

"Give them time," he said. "Teenagers can be difficult. My own school life wasn't idyllic. I hadn't found my path yet, and I didn't know how to relate to people my own age. There was a certain amount of cruelty involved."

"That's the problem," I said. "I know what path I have to take, and it seems like I have to take it alone."

"Do you?" he asked. "Haven't you thought about how to synergize the others powers with your own?"

"What, like having Vista stretch my punches to hit people far away?" I asked. "I have my Ki blasts for distance attacks."

"And against someone immune?" he asked. "The problem with parahuman powers is that they tend to be like a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors, in which one power beats another, but is beaten in turn by a third power."

I frowned.

"Against a Master, you might have difficult time," Armsmaster said. "Especially someone like Heartbreaker or the Simurgh. Even a tinker might be able to come up with countermeasures to deal with you."

I nodded. I suspected that Armsmaster had been working on countermeasures to deal with me.

"Who would be the most dangerous Wards for you to deal with?" Armsmaster asked.

"Clockblocker," I said. "If he lost any sense of mercy. He could string fishing line that would be almost invisible, and time lock it; he could decapitate someone if he wanted to. Defensively, he could shut almost anyone down if he could reach them."

He nodded. "And how could he be more effective without mutilating people?"

"He could have Vista change space to give him a distance attack," I said. "He could use pieces of paper as stairs to move to a higher vantage point. He could even use silly string. There's a lot of things he could do to be more effective if he wanted to."

"And Sophia?"

"Tinkertech so she can see where the electrical lines are," I said. "And maybe a visor to see where people are. Short of that, I could point out where people were with my Ki sense and have her phase tranquilizer bolts through walls before they ever have a chance to even know we are there."

"Vista?"

"Tough... she's already good with her power. I might give her containment foam grenades; she could hand deliver them right next to people's feet."

"If you are this good at figuring out how to use others' powers, why aren't you more creative with yours?"

I shrugged. "I've promised to try. It's just... my powers seem to be so _simple_. I've focused on increasing their power because that's the most obvious application."

"You've already proven that you can create light. Try other applications, preferably non-lethal ones. The last thing we need is a trail of corpses around a hero who is a minor."

I nodded. I had a few ideas already; it might be possible to move Ki. What if I could actually drain the Ki from others, or lend mine to them? Could I create a Ki attack with a smaller edge, maybe to create a cutting attack?

If I could create light, did that mean that I could create illusions? Could I use it like the Force and create telekinetic effects? That was sort of what I was doing when I was flying anyway? Why was affecting my own body any different than affecting other objects?

Could I absorb other kinds of energy? Could I extend the force field I surrounded myself with to protect others?

Until I tried, I wouldn't know what was possible and what was impossible. I'd have to try a lot of things, and probably fail at a lot of them before I got things right.

Everyone was disappointed in me, which meant that I couldn't continue doing as I had been. Even if I could simply push my way through to overpower my opponents, it wouldn't help me save hostages or stop Bonesaw from releasing a world ending pathogen into the air. Only strategy was going to accomplish that.

"I'm going to want some training in tactics," I said. "It's probably even more important than the fighting training I've been doing."

He nodded. "I doubt you'll have many problems with most opponents; few capes can lift more than three thousand tons, and even Alexandria can't without having the whole thing collapse on itself."

"I can't just drop boats on people's heads," I said. "There's some things I want to try, but I haven't worked out the kinks yet."

He nodded curtly.

From anyone else I would have thought that meant he was judging me; from Armsmaster it meant business as usual. He was professional to the very end, even if I'd heard whispers that he was something of a glory hound.

"You've made some mistakes," he said. "But I was the one who approved your dropping of the cars on Ash Beast. I should have anticipated the likely chemical processes that resulted. For that I apologize."

So that's why he was so much less judgmental than the others. He felt guilty too.

"However, assuming that you can throw yourself into a dangerous situation without knowing whether it is true or not... that is also something that I should have trained out of you. For my failures in not teaching you caution, I apologize."

Somehow, his apology made me feel worse than the judgment and censure from some of my colleagues.

"You and Sophia will be going to weekend training sessions with Alexandria, with special focus on teamwork, tactics and strategy, and knowing when to retreat."

"Why Sophia?" I asked.

"She needs remedial training with teamwork almost as much as you do," he admitted. "She doesn't gel well with the rest of the team, and part of that is that she resents being forced to be here. She seems to have a certain degree of admiration for you though."

"So if it's what the cool kids are doing, you think she might go along," I said dryly.

The strange part was that it wasn't a bad plan, assuming Sophia's tolerance of me wasn't just part of some convoluted long term plan to bully me some more.

Of course, if that happened I doubt she'd enjoy the aftermath much. I'd make sure of it.

Given my speed and abilities, it'd be ridiculously easy for me to get rid of a body in the middle of the ocean and be back before anyone noticed. I'd just have to wait for a cloudy day, when Dragon's satellites would have a harder time following me.

Not that I'd kill her, really. It was just pleasant to think about sometimes, doing things to my bullies. I'd imagined it back before I'd realized I had power. I'd imagined having Alexandria's powers and being able to drop people into space or something.

By people, of course, I meant Emma.

Of course, now I realized that the best revenge against Emma would be for her to realize just exactly who and what I am. Her knowing that I had power that she never would, powers that she'd dreamed of when she was younger would be perfect.

Not that I could tell her, not with Dad still vulnerable. Of course, Armsmaster told me he was now able to lift wights in the fifteen ton range, and bullets weren't likely to be more than an annoyance to him. Still, there were enough parahumans who would be happy to attack us at home even though it would be suicide for them and whoever they worked for.

Sophia seemed to be sincere, but I'd learned not to fully trust anyone, no matter how nice they seemed. Even now, the nicer version of Sophia wasn't a particularly good person. She was nicer to me, but how that fit into her warped version of a social hierarchy I wasn't sure.

She seemed to think that it was the right of the people on top to push those on the bottom even further down. When I'd been at the bottom, it had been terrible. Now that I was above her, she acted very differently.

If I dropped to the bottom again would she change her behavior toward me again? Had she really thought I was weak before, and she now respected me, or was she simply acting nicer for fear that I would lose patience with her and blast her into atoms.

I wondered if the Protectorate had scanners good enough to detect when you fully disintegrated someone. Unfortunately any blast strong enough to do that would also vaporize the wall behind and probably several others as well.

I'd read somewhere that it took 3 gigajoules to disintegrate a human body... and the standard lighting bolt had one percent of that energy. Of course, to vaporize an entire human it would have to cover their entire body, which would require sixty thousand times as much power. I had no doubt that I could output that much energy if I wanted to, although possibly not in one blast. Making the energy stop...

Could I?

Could I create a ball of energy that would seek people out, turn corners and stop on command? That would be a lot more useful than standard blasts.

My problem before had been one of perspective. I'd decided that my power was simple and there wasn't anything to do with it that was innovative, and because of that I hadn't done anything innovative other than my light blast.

Armsmaster stared at me for a moment, then dismissed me. I wondered if I looked like I was in a Tinker fugue. I had all these ideas for ways to use my powers, and no idea about how to even try to do some of these things. I could ask my Dad for advice, but I suspected that the innovators in our family had been the ones who'd been killed early.

Their innovations had doubtlessly died with them, while the more conservative members had been the ones to survive. Did that mean that we were domesticated, like that experiment on a fox farm in Russia. They'd let the friendliest foxes survive and breed, and the meaner foxes had been turned into coats.

Within ten generations changes had been seen, and within forty generations they had foxes who wagged their tails whenever humans would appear with floppy ears and changes in their fur and shapes of their skulls.

If my urge for battle was this strong, how bad had it been for my ancestors? Had they been lucky to survive childhood? I could imagine a four year old charging a bear and being killed in the old west very easily.

In France it would have been wild boars, or poor people, or whatever they had back in the middle ages when they weren't dying from the plague.

Sometimes I wondered if my education wasn't what it should be. It wasn't like Winslow really cared whether we knew a lot about history or politics or anything. It wasn't like any of us was expected to succeed as anything other than a fast food worker or drug dealer.

Mom would have been disappointed. Things I was interested in I knew a great deal about. Other things... not so much.

As I walked through the Rig, I noticed that the PRT agents were all giving me a wide berth. They were looking at me when they thought I wasn't looking, and they were whispering among my heads.

I might have worried that they were planning to fire me, but I knew that I was too important for them to do that. The PRT and Protectorate were cynical and pragmatic; they'd prefer a powerful bad person on their side than a weak good one.

Still, I'd have to work hard to change people's opinions of me. They thought I was a loose cannon, and dangerous, and the only way to overcome that opinion was to perform well over and over until all of this was a bad memory.

Alexandria's camp wasn't in Los Angeles.

I should have known; the kind of damage we could do to the landscape wasn't something that needed to be anywhere near a city of millions of people. Instead we were in Nevada in the desert.

Sophia was visibly sweating, even though I wasn't. She looked over at me with an annoyed look, and I grinned at her.

Alexandria strode out of a bunker and stared at us.

"This isn't the Army," she said. "Or the Air Force, or the Marines. They can enforce discipline, because each person has to be a cog in a machine. Cogs can be replaced, and each person knows that they are only as valuable as they are useful."

There were only ten of us, a much smaller group than I would have thought coming from Protectorate and Ward groups from all across the United States. There weren't enough of us to form several rows, and so we were lined up in a single rows.

We were all dressed in Army camouflage; a T-shirt and belt the color of sand, tan boots, and camouflage colored pants. No one was wearing hats, but everyone was wearing tiny domino masks that didn't really conceal anyone's features. I wondered why anyone would bother?

If a news person or villain came here and took pictures, it would be easy to find out who we were, which was probably why the location of this place was top secret. My Ki sense reached out three hundred miles now, and I couldn't detect anyone in a hundred mile radius.

With a map or Internet I could have probably figured out where we were from the towns I could detect further away, but none of that worked here. Whether it was because the network didn't reach or because they were jamming us I did not know.

"Unfortunately, each parahuman is one of a kind. No parahuman can exactly replace another, because no parahuman is exactly the same. That tends to make us an arrogant bunch. We think that because we are unique, because we are needed, that we are special."

Alexandria leaned forward.

"We ARE Special, but that doesn't mean that we're better than ordinary people. We won a lottery that gives us great power while giving us terrible traumas that makes us more unstable than everyone else. We are better than them, but we are worse than them at the same time."

None of us said anything. We stood at attention, despite the sweat rolling down most of their faces.

"Each one of you is here because you've made mistakes. Sometimes these were terrible mistakes that got people killed. Other times you only hurt yourselves. All of you lack the simple discipline that makes every Marine, Army, Navy man better than you. What do you think they would do with these powers you so value?"

She strode back and forth. "I can tell you what they'd do. They'd change the world."

"There's a difference between what I can do and what the Army can do. They can make you shave your heads, shave your beards... I can't do that because it could jeopardize secret identities."

I felt some of the others shift. There was a sort of smugness in the way they were standing, a defiance even in front of Alexandria herself. They probably thought they were being brave; I knew they were being stupid.

Sophia glanced at me uncertainly, and I gave her a tiny shake of my head.

The Protectorate wouldn't have given Alexandria this job unless she was good at it, and she wouldn't be good at it if she couldn't do anything to us.

"Of course, in the actual Army, all they can do is shout at you," Alexandria said. "But the contracts you signed are a little different. They give me authority to do things that would never ever be allowed in the actual Army."

She turned to me.

"Cadet Sparta," she said.

I stiffened and tried to remember if I was standing correctly.

"People tell me you think you are strong. The strongest Cape in Brockton Bay. I'm here to tell you that Brockton Bay isn't shit."

A moment later she backhanded me, and the world exploded as I flew backward toward one of the Adobe barracks behind us. The entire building collapsed as I flew through it, and I found myself buried in the hillside behind it.

It took me a moment to get over the ringing in my ears as I shoved my way out of tons of dirt.

"You aren't humans here, and you won't be treated like humans until you prove that you deserve to be."

Although she never raised her voice, it still carried. The others look shocked as I staggered back into line. Everyone knew I was a minor, and if she was willing to hit me, then all bets were off.

"Welcome to hell," Alexandria said.


	39. Flinch

We all stared.

They'd built a small city out here in the desert, ten blocks by ten blocks. From what we could see it looked like the downtown of any metropolitan area; it could have been New York, or Chicago. It couldn't have been Brockton bay, because the buildings were too nice.

How much money had this training facility cost to build, and how much did it cost to repeatedly repair the damage we were likely to do to it?

"The most important thing we are here to teach you is Teamwork," Alexandria said. "In the Army you learn that by living, eating and working with each other twenty four hours a day for months at a time. We don't have that luxury."

The others looked a lot less arrogant since Alexandria had knocked me through the old barracks. I suspected that the message hadn't really been meant for me at all; if it had been she'd have hit me a lot harder.

Seeing her hit a minor had shocked all of the others, and they now stood at military attention.

"The best way to teach teamwork is to force you to sink or swim," Alexandria said. "So the first test will involve Spartan here and Shadow Stalker facing off against the rest of you."

"Just two of them against the rest of us?" a tall, lanky teen standing next to me asked.

"I was tempted to put all of you against Spartan, but Shadow Stalker knows her and knows her capabilities. You were all told not to introduce yourselves or your powers for a reason. Does anyone know why that might be?"

"Because we won't always know what powers our enemies have?" the teenager beside me asked.

Alexandria nodded. "And sometimes even supposedly known quantities will surprise you. It's common for capes to keep a little in reserve in case of emergencies."

The others nodded, as though this was self evident. I hadn't been hiding any of my abilities, probably because I hadn't had to. Of course, the whole monkey thing had come as a surprise to the Empire, but I'd been surprised to.

"Don't take Spartan for granted," Alexandria said. "I won't go into her powers except to say this; I slapped her through a building and she got up. Any of the rest of you would have been paste from a blow of similar strength. What does that tell you?"

"She's tough," a sullen looking girl said. "Really tough. She's probably strong too."

The others were looking at me, and I did my best to look unconcerned. I wondered what powers they had, and if any of them would be a problem for me.

"She calls herself Spartan," the boy beside me said. "That means she thinks she's a fighter."

There were an even split of boys to girls on the other team, which was unusual. With me and Sophia it made a sixty forty split female to male.

Most of them looked to be Wards age, with only a couple of them looking old enough to be in the Protectorate.

"So what is the mission?" a girl with a nose ring asked. She'd been one of the most disrespectful before.

"You have an hour to set up inside that city. Use whatever you find there in order to set up ambushes for Shadow Stalker and Spartan here. Once the hour is up, the loudspeaker will sound the alarm, and the Spartan and Shadow Stalker will come for you."

"What are the rules?"

"You can try to kill Spartan," Alexandria said. Everyone gasped and stared. "But you have to try to avoid injuring Shadow Stalker any more than you have to. Spartan is to try to capture you with the least damage possible."

"You don't think we can hurt her?" one boy asked incredulously. I'd pegged him as a troublemaker early on.

"We'll see," Alexandria said.

"Really tough," the girl with the nose ring said.

Alexandria looked at them all, and then said, "You've got five, four, three, two...one."

They all looked startled, but after a moment they headed into the city at a run. Idly I followed them with my Ki sense. There were no problems following all of them.

"Hey Sophia," I said. "Remember what we were talking about the other day?"

She grinned at me. We'd talked about using my Ki sense to help her shoot through walls. We'd spent some time practicing, coming up with terminology that didn't seem to help before the simpler expedient of my simply creating a laser pointer on the wall with my Ki so that she'd know where to shoot had occurred to us. Sometimes the simplest solutions were best.

"I want both of you to make it as difficult for the rest of them as possible," Alexandria said. "Terrify them with how quickly you take them down."

"Are they that weak?" Sophia asked.

Alexandria shook her head. "They all have good powers, but none of them have worked together. They will squabble over who is leader before going off to do their own thing. Picking them off one by one should be fairly easy."

"What if one of them is a real leader type?" I asked. "Who can get them all together?"

"Then you'll have a more interesting time of it. That too is an unknown quantity."

"I'm not going to know how hard I can hit these guys," I told Sophia, "Which may mean that you have to do the heavy lifting on this one."

She lifted one eyebrow.

I shrugged. "I can probably wrap a lamp pole around some of them, but it's going to be a pain."

"There is one other stricture for you that I didn't want the others to hear," Alexandria said. "You are to avoid property damage as much as possible. I'm aware that you could push buildings down if you wanted, but we have to replace these things."

She hadn't wanted the others to hear because it would have affected their strategy. Part of tactics was the fog of war; you never had all the information that you'd like in battle and there were always aspects that were hidden from sight.

"So what do we do for the next hour?" I asked.

"Talk about boys and braid our hair?" Sophia asked. She looked at me and smirked. "Well, if we had enough hair to braid."

"I'd like to talk about how to deal with Ash Beast other than throwing myself in like a reverse suicide bomber."

Alexandria looked at me strangely. "There is no known tactics for beating the Ash Beast. There was a time when I would have depended on my durability to fight him, but after my encounter with the Siberian I became much more cautious."

"Hebert here doesn't even need a frying pan. She goes straight for the fire," Sophia said. It should have sounded like a taunt, but instead there was a strange admiring note to her voice.

"Being foolhardy isn't the same as being brave," Alexandria said disapprovingly. "Any idiot can throw their life away. A hero makes sure that if they give their life it is worth it."

Sophia looked like she wanted to argue, but the memory of my crashing through an adobe building obviously made her think twice about it.

Alexandria smirked. "You already are showing more wisdom than she did."

Sophia scowled. "What else was she supposed to do?"

"She could have tried throwing Armsmaster's halberd," Alexandria said. "It survived for a little while inside the flames. It might even have reached the center. She could have tried pouring water on him... it likely would have just created superheated steam, but it's not something she tried. She could have called for help... anything other than plunging face first into a fire without checking to see if she could take it."

"She's right," I said, glancing at the both of them. As I was speaking to them, I was keeping track of the others through their Ki.

"What are the things we can't do to them?" I asked.

"Kill or maim," Alexandria said. "And don't knock over any buildings. Holes in walls are acceptable as long as they aren't overly large."

"You don't think any of them can kill Hebert?" Sophia asked, glancing at me.

"I'd be incredibly disappointed in her if she lets that happen. My one warning to both of you is that I don't run this camp with people with weak powers. There are other options for those people. Your powers are borderline, Sophia... objectively the others all have stronger powers, offensively at least."

Sophia stiffened.

"That doesn't mean that you won't beat them. Strong tactics can often overwhelm an advantage of power."

"And since we have that advantage, we're going to have to watch out," I said.

Alexandria looked at the sun. I wondered if she didn't have to worry about going blind, which made me wonder if I should practice staring into the sun and letting Panacea heal me. She'd call it stupid, but if I could adapt to bright lights, then things like flash bangs wouldn't affect me.

"I've given them enough time," Alexandria said. "The entire city is wired for sound and video. I will be going to observe. You have forty five more minutes before the sirens ring. Use the time wisely."

A moment later she was gone. I followed her Ki to a location under the city, probably in the equivalent of an Endbringer shelter.

Glancing at Sophia, I said, "I think I want to make a good impression on her, and I'm not going to do that by rushing in and throwing people around."

She nodded.

"I've got a bead on all of them," I said. "Let's make sure that they don't know what hit them."

We discussed plans for the next three quarters of an hour, and then the sirens rang. The eight of them had scattered, with none of them being close together. Presumably they hadn't been able to work together and had decided to take me down on their own.

I'd have expected the weaker ones to band together while the stronger ones would be confident in their powers. Maybe none of them thought they had weak powers. I wouldn't be able to plan around their powers until I knew what they were.

The problem with my Ki sense was that it only worked on living things. I couldn't see buildings or other intervening obstacles. That meant that Sophia and I had to be careful If they were clever they would have set traps for us.

I grabbed Sophia, and I flew her around the city, staying low and hopefully out of sight. I couldn't rule out the idea that some of them had tech I hadn't seen. Coming at the city from a different side might mean that we had to deal with fewer traps and might even be able to come upon some of them from behind.

We walked cautiously down streets that looked utterly real. If I hadn't known different I would have been completely fooled. Here and there were signs of where previous groups had done battle; gouges in the walls and bullet holes.

It was eerily quiet. There were none of the usual city sounds that I would have expected, no animals, no birds. The only sounds were those of the wind being funneled between tall buildings. This was probably what the apocalypse would feel like, if mankind went out with a whimper instead of a bang.

I stopped and pointed; we were one building away from one of the others. Moving around to the side of the building, I gestured and Sophia quietly loaded her crossbow. It had taken time for us to figure out how to aim; after all, Sophia and I were never going to be in the same place at the same time. Trying to figure out the differences in angle had been a nightmare.

Eventually we'd come upon a solution. I would stand behind Sophia, and I'd use my Ki to put a spot on the wall.

I did so now, and Sophia aimed carefully. A moment later the bolt was phasing through the wall.

The person on the other side of the wall flickered, and their Ki weakened suddenly. I'd seen it before in people tranquilized by Sophia's bolts.

Cautiously we made our way around the building. Tranquilizers weren't instantaneous, even with Tinkertech, and there had been many people gored by supposedly tranquilized animals. Parahuman physiology was even more unpredictable.

Sophia grinned as we saw that it was the arrogant boy who'd stood beside me. He hadn't even known what hit him.

She zip tied him, and we moved on quickly. In the next ten minutes we took out two more of the others without ever being seen.

As we moved down the next street, I suddenly felt four of the others moving. They were converging on our location, which meant that they probably knew where we were.

"We've got four bogeys," I said. "Heading this way. Either they have a thinker, or they used a gadget to figure out where we were."

She looked at me and nodded. We hadn't expected to be able to take everyone out by ambushing them, although we'd hoped to take out a few more.

"Get some elevations," I said. I crouched down.

She grimaced and ran toward me. As her foot landed on my outstretched hand I threw her upward; she went shadow and flew up to the top of a ten story building. The first time I'd tried it she'd overshot and I'd had to go flying after her. The last thing I wanted to do was throw her into space. I'd heard rumors that powers didn't work in space.

The others were coming fast; I barely had time to turn when a bluish green construct of hard light in the shape of a fist exploded from three blocks away. I barely had time to dodge as the construct caused the wall of the building behind me to collapse.

I staggered back against the building across from the one Sophia was now concealed on top of. This was a skyscraper, and I felt a nasty shock as lightning seemed to erupt from the building, arcing into my body.

Compared to the Ash Beast, this was nothing but an irritant.

The fist construct turned into a hand, grabbing at me. I dodged it even though I was fairly sure that I could have broken free. I'd promised to learn my lesson from Ash Beast after all.

I could see them all three blocks away, all but the fifth, who had chosen not to join them. They were staring at me, and so I flew toward them at my maximum speed. To them it had to look like I was a human missile; two of them flinched as I flew toward them. The third brought up what seemed to be an invisible field of energy. It was close enough to Ki that I could sense it, and I stopped suddenly as I reached it.

We were supposed to shock the others, and so I reared back and punched the shield as hard as I could. It shattered and the girl who had generated it cried out and moaned, collapsing to the ground.

One of the boys had found a bandoleer, he grabbed something from it and threw it at me. Instinctively I dodged, moving to stand behind him. The capsule he threw exploded into a huge amount of containment foam.

I threw him into it before it hardened.

The girl who made the hard light constructs was suddenly pummeling at me with hundreds of bluish green fists. I moved as fast as I could, but even though I was probably moving faster than she could easily see, there were enough fists that it was impossible to miss being hit by all of them.

I shoved through the mass of fists and I grabbed the girl; I threw her into the air, and she screamed; the light constructs winked out. I'd had some experience with being careful with Sophia; sudden acceleration could cause unconsciousness or even death. It didn't affect Sophia because in her breaker state I wasn't even sure she actually had a human body.

In this case, the girl was unconscious.

I felt someone hit me from behind with a massive bold of electricity. I hadn't had a chance to catch the other girl yet, which meant that he wasn't thinking things through. At the height she was falling from, if I fell, she'd be dead.

I leaped into the air and I caught the girl, dodging the blast the boy sent our way. I intensified my Ki shield, extending it around both of us, although I wasn't certain how good it would be around the girl. I dodged four more blasts before a tranquilizer bolt struck the boy in the neck.

I dropped the girl to the pavement, and I could see what he was intending to do before he did it. His hand shot out at the building Sophia was standing on, intending to blast the building. It was a large enough blast that it might have electrified or even killed Sophia.

Instead I was there, letting the blast strike me in the chest. He turned up the heat as I slowly walked toward him, letting the electricity flow over me like water.

He was cursing as he poured on more and more power. By the time I reached him, he was drooping, though.

I grabbed his wrists, and within a minute he was unconscious.

There was one left to go, and she was standing at the end of the block. She had to have seen what I had just done, and yet she still seemed confident.

She smirked and gestured toward me, confidently, almost as though my loss was a foregone conclusion. Why was she so confident? What power did she have that made all these other powers irrelevant?

There was no way to know without fighting her, so I flew down the street toward her at supersonic speed.

She didn't even flinch.


	40. Worthless

The speed I was flying at was only an intimidation tactic. One of the odd things about my flight abilities was that I could accelerate and stop instantaneously, in contravention to all known laws of physics.

That meant that I stopped immediately in front of the girl, and I tapped her on the solar plexus. Unlike a strike to the head, I wasn't going to give her a concussion, and yet a blow like this should be enough to put a normal person out of the fight.

Since I'd gotten stronger again I'd practiced a lot in Leet's holodeck to learn just how hard I should hit someone to avoid causing their internal organs to liquefy and their eyes to explode.

That had been a memorable practice session. It had made a strong impression on me and I'd vowed never to do that to a normal person if I could help it. Jack Slash, maybe.

As I hit her, I thought I felt something like a phantom tap on my own stomach.

The girl smirked. She had a piercing on her nose and she had dyed green hair. She was wearing the same military outfits we all were, but I suspected that she normally dressed in all black.

"Is that all you've got?" she asked. She grinned. "My granny could hit harder than that."

I hit her harder, this time in the shoulder. I felt a corresponding blow on my own shoulder.

As I started hitting her harder and harder, she stood there laughing at me. I was starting to understand what her power was; anything I directed at her, she directed back at me.

She'd be the perfect sparring partner, and I was looking forward to practicing with her. I could easily beat myself to a pulp, assuming there wasn't an upper limit to her power. We'd have to be careful about that; the last thing I needed was for her to turn into a red smear on the wall because I'd misjudged a punch.

However, we were supposed to be beating these people, and that meant I couldn't keep beating on this girl uselessly.

I stopped and called out,"Shadowstalker."

A bolt came flashing through the air. I snatched it out of midair and then slowly and almost gently I tapped it into her arm.

She looked shocked, and a moment later she collapsed.

Alexandria checked her watch. "Ten minutes. Not bad. It would have gone a lot faster if you hadn't spent the last four minutes playing with her."

I shrugged. "I'm looking forward to sparring with her, assuming she can take it."

"Let's get the others together and discuss what they did wrong," She said. "I've already gathered the ones you've zip tied and I had the antidote to Sophia's tranquilizer with me."

She grabbed the girl who was on the ground, none too gently, and a moment later she was gone.

I looked at Sophia and I said "So we follow her, I guess?"

It took us two minutes to reach the spot she'd taken the others, a place near the center of the "town." It looked a little like a bank building.

The others were looking groggy, but they were already waking up. They were sitting on cheap metal folding chairs, and there were two on the end.

There was a sixty inch television screen on the wall, and Alexandria had a remote in her hand. Considering who she usually worked with, it seemed remarkably low tech. Of course it was possible they'd blown their budget on building the town.

"Ten minutes," Alexandria said. "They beat you in ten minutes, and it only took that long because she stopped to play for the last four minutes."

The others looked glum. I could sympathize.

"Let's play the tape and see what your thoughts are," she said.

As the screen lit up, I realized that Sophia and I looked really competent. We barely spoke to each other, and we moved like we knew what we were doing. Considering that I never felt that way, it was pretty impressive.

"Why did they beat you?" she asked, once the screen went dark.

One girl scowled and said, "We didn't have a chance. She's a monster."

"How many of you did Sparta actually use her powers on?" Alexandria asked. "Most of you were taken out by Shadow Stalker, and her power is almost entirely defensive. A highly trained normal person could have done many of the things she did, even if they'd have had to choose different vantage points."

"They worked together," one of the boys we'd shot through a building said. I'd never even gotten to see what his power was. "I'm not even sure Sparta could have beaten Swerve on her own."

"Could you?" Alexandria asked, turning to me.

I nodded. "Lots of ways. I could have picked her up and dropped her in water. I could have picked her up and carried her into the upper atmosphere until she passed out; I suspect I'd last longer than she would without air. I could have just choked her unconscious, or even just tied her up slowly."

"Why didn't you?" she asked.

"It was a teamwork exercise," I said. "And it was more humiliating that way."

The girl glared at me and I looked at her. "You shouldn't have smirked."

Sophia smirked.

"It's possible that you might not have had a chance to actually beat Sparta, but there are times when you don't have to beat someone to win," Alexandria said.

"Like when?" one boy asked, challengingly.

"Like during Endbringer fights," Alexandria said. "No one is strong enough to actually beat them, not yet, but a good day has us holding them off long enough that they get bored, or damaging them enough that they have to retreat. There are times when you will have to hold the line so that people can get to safety. You know that you can't win, but you do your best anyway."

We all glanced at each other soberly. Endbringers weren't something that was mentioned in polite society. People had a superstitious fear that talking about them would call them down on you. There were some people who thought that the Simurgh was listening, and that she controlled the others.

I wasn't sure if that was true, but it was enough of a superstition that it was an unspoken rule among ordinary people.

"We could have done better, though?" a girl at the end asked.

"Yes," Alexandria said. "The question is how?"

"The four that went off on their own could have worked with the rest of us," a man said irritably. I couldn't tell if he was old for a Ward or young for a Protectorate member.

"Their powers might have made a difference," Alexandria said. "How?"

"Aphrodite was our best chance," the first girl said. "She's a master and she could have ended it all, assuming she'd had people to back her up instead of going it alone."

"In non-parahuman warfare, tanks are often the toughest unit on the field. Yet they don't operate alone. Why?"

"Because they become vulnerable to people with the right equipment. They don't have a very good field of vision, and someone could sneak up and drop a grenade in, hit them with an antitank missile or all sorts of things."

"Masters are the same way. I've yet to see a master who was also a brute, which means that they are squishy. How many of you played role playing games when you were younger?"

Three of them raised their hands. I was surprised to see that many in a group like this; I always thought that the bad kids thought they were too cool for hobbies like that. Maybe they'd been good once but had let the sudden fact that they had power go to their heads.

I could almost sympathize.

"There was a saying back in my gaming days," Alexandria said. "Kill the wizard first."

"Why?"

"Because Wizards can't be predicted. A fighter you know what to expect. The same for a thief or rogue. A wizard has tricks you've never seen before. They're glass cannons; they are easy to kill but if you don't they do a lot of damage."

"If we'd kept Aphrodite in the center, with Viridian to protect her with force walls, and Swerve to take Sparta on until Aphrodite could do her dance, we might have had a chance. Synapse could have taken Shadow Stalker... I've heard she's weak to electricity." The man who spoke was the one I couldn't tell if he was old enough for the Protectorate.

Sophia scowled. The fact that this information had been bandied about had to be galling for her.

"Liliander could have created enough plant life to maybe blot out her life sense," the man continued. He glanced at me. "I was at a briefing where we discussed her capabilities. It might not have worked, especially with the lack of water out here, but we wouldn't know until we tried."

"Capsule has a lot of things in those shrinking things he keeps in his belt. He probably would have done well with support."

"And what of you, Peregrine?" Alexandria asked.

"I was trying to find birds to serve as spies, but the desert doesn't exactly pt me at my best," the man said. "I could have flown up to a better vantage point anyway and served as a scout."

I was edging toward thinking he was a Protectorate member. Why was he here, and why had he been separated from the others?

"So why didn't you?"

"Viridian and I have a... complicated history. Neither of us can work together. The others felt her powers would be more useful than mine, so I was voted out of the group."

"And during an Endbringer fight?"

"I'll be search and rescue, she'll be front line. There won't be a conflict," he said.

"If you hadn't cheated on me I'd be able to work with you, you piece of..."

Alexandria interrupted. "The fact that you were sent here when both of you are normally useful heroes says that this is more of a problem than either of you want to admit. Why didn't one of you transfer to a different branch?"

"Why should I have to leave because he's a worthless waste of space?" the girl at the end said. She must be Viridian, the girl with the force constructs. "I love my city and I'm not leaving."

"I knew it was a mistake to dip the ink in the company well," Peregrine said. "But I didn't realize that the well was completely full of crazy. I've got family in the city, and I'm not leaving."

"Does this look like a high school?" Alexandria asked, stepping closer to Peregrine, who flinched. "When actual high school children act more mature than two Protectorate members, we have a serious problem."

Viridian must be older than I'd thought, I decided. That was a good thing, because if she was Wards age and he wasn't... that'd be a little disturbing, especially if the protectorate knew about it and wasn't doing anything.

"So why did you go off on your own, Liliander?" Alexandria asked.

The girl with the green hair scowled. "I don't play well with others. Besides, my plant powers are stupid. I don't even know why you made me join up. What do you want me to do, grow you some tea?"

Weird. I'd always assumed that a parahuman with plant powers would be some kind of hippie, not what looked like a goth with piercings and everything.

"Better than the marijuana plants you were growing when we found you," Alexandria said. "If we'd found that you were growing worse things, we might have made a different decision."

The girl scowled. "That was just for my mom's glaucoma."

I heard Sophia snicker. Several of the others did as well.

"There was an awful lot of money under your bed for that," Alexandria said. She turned to the rest of us. "Not that any of the rest of you have anything to feel superior about. All of you have crimes, ranging from assault up to actual manslaughter."

She meant me, I realized with a shock. I straightened up and saw that at least half of the others did as well. I'd been feeling a little smug about our victory, even if I hadn't exactly been fighting people who were in my weight class. The look that Alexandria was giving me was no friendlier than she was giving the others.

"None of you are team players," Alexandria said. "Which is a problem, because that means that you are going to get yourselves or someone else killed. Nobody can work alone, not even me."

I could see her point, but I didn't like her tone of voice. It was dismissive, as though I didn't matter any more than any of these others. She'd been the one who'd told me that I was important. Why was she pulling back on that now?

"You think the criminals are bad? At least they work together. None of you can manage even that much. You wouldn't last a day in a criminal gang without getting a bullet to the back of the head."

She glanced at me. "Or poison in your cereal. We've excused your crimes because we thought you had something worthwhile to offer, even if you are just meat to throw in front of the Endbringers so that real people can have one more minute to escape and get to live lives that are actually productive for society."

She couldn't be talking about me. Maybe my crimes didn't matter at all if I performed the way they wanted. When the fate of the world was at stake, almost anything could be forgiven.

Would they accept Bonesaw if she agreed to help fight the Endbringers? I had an uncomfortable feeling that they would.

"I'm disgusted by all of you," Alexandria said. "It's bad enough that you think you are God's gift to the world; you've all chosen to look down on people who are actually trying to help."

Hearing her say these things was making me increasingly angry. I could see it in the eyes of the others too, but unlike the others I had the slightest of chances of actually fighting back. My experience with Ash Beast was the only thing that kept me from lashing out at her. I'd promise to fight smart, and I was going to keep that promise.

Besides, assaulting a Triumverate member probably wasn't going to impress Dad much. Still... part of me wanted to punch her in the mouth. It'd probably collapse the roof on us and kill everyone else in the room, including Sophia. I'd have to wait until we were outside then, and maybe I'd need allies.

Until I was strong enough that I could stand on my own I was going to have to listen to them, and it was possible that I would never be strong enough to be untouchable. A single master could take me out as could someone with a power like Fog. I'd need my own people, loyal to me if I was going to be able to move with impunity.

People like Alexandria had?

Was she simply the first who had done it, forming an alliance with Legend, Hero and Eidolon? They'd created the Protectorate and turned it into their own private fiefdom. Who were they to look down on us because we didn't have their resources.

I could see the same anger on the faces of the others, including Sophia.

"It stings, doesn't it?" Alexandria said. "Hearing the truth. All of you are fuck ups, and alone, not a single one of you is worth the dirt on my shoe. Together you might be worth a little more than that."

I felt a vein throb in my temple. Who the hell was she to tell me I was worthless? I'd had enough of that over the last year to last me a lifetime. Hadn't I proven that I was worthwhile? Hadn't she told me that the fate of the world rested on my shoulders?

Why would she tell me that and just knock me down again.

I'd idolized this woman throughout my childhood. I'd had posters on my wall. I'd thought she was the epitome of what women should be. I'd wanted to be her for as long as I could remember.

"Hebert?" Sophia whispered. She was looking at me strangely.

Why was the floor rumbling? A pen slid off a desk and fell to the floor before it began to rise into the air.

Alexandria stared at the pen for a moment, and then back at us. "None of you has telekinesis. We've got an unknown intruder on the base."

A moment later she was gone.

"Get control of yourself Hebert," Sophia whispered sharply. "Do you want her to throw you through another building? You aren't strong enough to take her on."

"Not yet," I said.

As I got control of myself, the shaking in the room stopped. The pen dropped to the ground.

What in the hell had just happened? I had a strange sense that I was connected to the room shaking. I'd been unconsciously drawing in Ki, and I was now filled with it almost to bursting. Slowly I began to release it.

Sophia snorted. "For a minute there I almost thought you were going blonde."

What the hell did she mean by that? I had no idea.

Alexandria kept us in lockdown for the next three hours while Protectorate members gated in by someone came to investigate the base. I could have told her that there was no one else alive on the base, although it was possible that a Stranger might be able to fool my Ki sense.

The gate itself was interesting. I could almost sense how it was done, although I had no idea how I would go about doing it. Maybe when my experimenting with Ki was more advanced.

They didn't find anyone, and Alexandria punished us by making us run ten miles around the city. I had to do it while dragging a decommissioned Navy destroyer around the city. I had no idea how they'd gotten it out here, since it would have collapsed around Alexandria.

It created a deep trench behind me, and the chains they used had links thicker than my arms. The chains themselves had to weigh in the tens of tons. Despite this, I was expected to keep up with the others, and they complained about all the dust I was spreading. I could tell that they were intimidated by the sight of the ship moving behind us.

If Alexandria thought this was going to instill discipline in me, she was wrong. All this was doing was making me stronger. When I got strong enough, I planned to make her eat her words.

I'd need a team to protect myself, of course. Alexandria had friends, and I wouldn't put it past her to have a master there to shut me down.

She'd regret making me feel like no one. I'd beat her into the ground, and then I'd kill the Endbringers. Once I'd done that, I'd kill Scion.

No one was going to make me feel worthless, not ever again.


	41. Bunk

"I've been dealing with bitches like her my whole life," Sophia said.

We were in the girl's barracks, which was another adobe structure outside the city. It was strange hearing nothing outside but the wind; the usual sounds of Brockton Bay were missing. There were no passing cars, no sirens in the distance, no gunshots. There was just silence.

The other six girls were moaning on their beds; only Sophia and I still seemed to have any energy. In Sophia's case it was because running was her thing. In my case it was because I was used to this kind of

training.

"You were one of those bitches," I said. "Don't think you weren't."

"Maybe," Sophia said. "But she can't treat us like that."

"Can't she?" I asked. "Weren't you the one who kept talking about how the people in power like to shit downhill?"

She was silent for a moment. "Yeah."

I'd had time to think since I'd felt that surge of rage earlier. Why had I reacted so strongly? What had triggered me to the point where I'd actually wanted to hit Alexandria?

Was it disappointment that she wasn't the person I'd always thought she was? I'd idolized her after all, and she turned out to be just as mean, just as much of a bully as other people in my life?

Or was it because I was subconsciously comparing her to Emma, someone who had been my friend and then suddenly betrayed my trust and turned against me?

Objectively Alexandria hadn't done anything wrong other than hitting me, which I didn't even mind. Her hitting me hadn't bothered me at all, but a few little words had driven me to a rage such as I hadn't experienced in a while.

Or was I simply transferring my anger and frustration. I had more than a year of anger at Emma and Sophia and Madison, anger at the ABB for almost beating me to death, and anger at the Empire for torturing me.

I'd tortured Night, essentially beaten her to death because she'd given me an excuse to vent my rage. Was I so full of rage that all it took was a few words to make me want to hurt someone?

That wasn't healthy.

"She's just play acting like being a drill sergeant," Viridian said. "My dad was a real drill sergeant, and so I'm used to it. It doesn't make it any easier."

Now that I was actually paying attention, I could see that she and Liliander both had green hair and piercings. Was that a style wherever they were from, or had one of them copied the other.

"You guys know each other?" I asked.

The two of them were on beds next to each other.

Viridian smirked. "Saw the resemblance, did you? We're sisters. I started dressing like this to piss my dad off, and when she saw how much it bothered him, she followed suit."

"I didn't copy you," the younger girl said sullenly. "I just liked the style. And it fit with my powers."

Looking around, it didn't look like any of us believed her. Not that some of the girls looked like they were listening. Didn't the Protectorate believe in basic physical fitness? Running ten miles might be the only way to escape the Nine. Being in that kind of shape might be the only thing that gave you the endurance to finish a hard fight.

Of course, none of them had failed to finish the course, so maybe I was being a little harsh. After all, before my beating by the ABB I doubt that I could have run even four miles.

"Doesn't having green hair make it hard to keep a secret identity?" Sophia asked incredulously.

"Our costumes cover our hair," Viridian said. "So it doesn't matter."

"I've had my costume burned off me," I said. "So I wouldn't want to have a unique hair coloring to give me away."

"It burned your hair off too," Sophia said. "You looked like charred hamburger meat. I doubt anybody was going to see if you went green or not."

"If it's bad enough to burn our costumes off, then we won't have anything to worry about," Viridian said. "Because we'll be dead."

It was short sighted of them, I thought. Leaving an identifiable corpse was just asking for your family to have trouble by people seeking revenge. Still, it wasn't worth arguing over.

"Does everyone here know each other?" I asked.

"Just the two of us," Viridian said. "We've heard of Aphrodite of course, and Swerve is an up and comer. I used to date Peregrine, before I realized just what a piece of-"

"Let's not talk about that," Liliander interrupted. "Or we'll be here all night. I've heard enough about Peregrine to last a lifetime."

"So what's it like being a Ward outside of the craphole that is Brockton Bay?" Sophia asked.

"We're from San Diego," Viridian said. "So I doubt it's that different. Aphrodite is from Rayleigh. Swerve is from Philadephia"

"Have Nazis overrun your town? Or Asian rage dragons?" I asked. I wondered if Philadelphia had any good villains I could fight. Brockton Bay was getting a little sparse. Lung still hadn't challenged me despite my press conference.

"No..." Viridian said. "The Protectorate wouldn't let that happen."

I glanced at Sophia, who stared back at me.

"How often do the Wards get into fights there?" I asked.

"About once every six weeks or so," Viridian said. "I'd thought it was going to be worse, but I've only been in one fight since I was forced into the program."

"Wards in Brockton Bay get into fights about twice a week," I said. "And seriously, that's mostly because they stay around the safe parts of town and don't take many risks."

"A bunch of cowards," Sophia said. "When I was a vigilante, I went out almost every night, and there were nights I got into three or four fights."

Now it was my turn to stare at her. No wonder she was as good at fighting as she was.

"That's crazy," Swerve said, speaking up for the first time. "How did you find all the crime? I mean, surely there can't be that many crimes in one city."

"There were three hundred fifty murders in Brockton Bay last year," Sophia said. "Robbery, rapes and other crimes are a multiple of that. In the right neighborhoods you just have to wait a few hours and you are guaranteed to see multiple crimes on the same block."

"There were thirty five murders in San Diego," Viridian said. "And we've got like five times the population. How did things get that bad there?"

"The economy crashed," I said. "People got desperate. The gangs moved in and offered people hope when the government wouldn't."

"Still, the Protectorate should have tripled the number of Capes in the region until the crime scene was more under control. Isn't your Director taking care of business?"

"We've heard there were budget cuts," Sophia said.

"There haven't been any budget cuts in the last three years," Viridian said. "We've actually been doing pretty well."

Sophia scowled. "So because we're poor they decided to just throw us to the wolves."

"There's other poor cities out there that have been given more attention. I don't know why Brockton Bay is different."

"Maybe they just want to see what happens when they put the ants in a jar and let them fight it out for themselves... like they don't have Simurgh zones for that," Sophia said.

The room grew quiet at the mention of the Simurgh. It was unlikely that she'd come to a place as isolated as this, but not impossible. Sophia suddenly looked apologetic.

"It's a sensitive subject. They let my family's home burn to the ground, and the only one who did anything is this crazy white girl right here."

She pointed at me.

Aphrodite spoke for the first time. "I could have taken you, you know. If you hadn't snuck up on me like that."

"Why do you think we did?" Sophia asked. "You can't always expect people to play fair. In the real world they almost never do. Alexandria's a bitch, but she's right about working together."

I was surprised to hear Sophia say that. From what I'd heard from the other Wards she hadn't wanted to work with any of them before I'd come along.

"Nobody has all the bases covered. Sparta's got a bad ass set of powers, but a Master might get her easy as pie. If I sneak up and bash that master in the head, she can go fight whatever giant lizard or dragon or whatever they're wanting her to fight this week in peace."

"Didn't it bother you when Alexandria hit you?"Swerve asked. "She could have hit me and it wouldn't have done anything, but it looked like it hurt you."

"I get stronger when I heal from damage," I said. "So she was doing me a favor really. I've had worse in training on a daily basis."

"I've seen some of the crazy crap they've had her doing,' Sophia agreed. "Back when she was still almost human I saw her covered with bruises; I thought her pops was beating her. Almost called the cops."

"How strong are you?" Swerve asked. "I've never even felt it when someone attacks me, but I was starting to feel it toward the end there."

"I could have flown with that Destroyer," I said. "But dragging it was harder, because of all the dirt. They say Alexandria is five hundred times as strong as I am."

"Which means she's five hundred times as strong as everyone else," Sophia said proudly. "She can't take it from Ash Beast yet, but I don't see Alexandria jumping in there either."

"I'm just a brute," I said. "It's not like you guys don't have really cool powers."

Swerve stared at me like I was crazy. "You can fly. I'm pretty tough defensively, but unless someone attacks me, I can't do much."

"My powers are defensive and you don't hear me whining about it," Sophia said irritably. "Get a weapon and start bashing people with it, and they'll fight back. Hell, get some tinkertech. Better yet, get a friend to throw them at you."

"Yeah," I said. "Have Viridian hit someone so they slam into you. They'll get hit twice and they'll never know what hit them."

"That's not a bad idea," Swerve said slowly. "Not that I work with Viridian, but I get the idea."

"That's well and good for her," Liliander said. "Swerve's got a major league power, and even Shadow Stalker's power is kind of cool. My power is just stupid."

"What can you do?"

"I can make plants grow really fast, animate them to attack, that kind of thing."

"Have you ever thought about talking to a bio-tinker?" I asked. "Get them to make plants that knock people out by spraying them, or extra strong plants to wrap around people? You might even be able to do the thing Aphrodite does, just with pheromones."

Liliander frowned, as though none of these ideas had occurred to her before.

"Even if you've just got your base power, you should probably keep plant seeds in a belt. There aren't always the kinds of plants you want just laying around. You could use vines to entangle people, and you could beat people with trees. Did you ever see that Lord of the Rings movie... the one with the Ents?"

She looked suddenly thoughtful.

"If you can use your power in a broad area, you could be a nightmare to anybody not immune to being beaten to death by a tree. Except for a few brutes, that's pretty much everybody. Also, you'd be perfect

for crowd control, for keeping a lot of mooks off of your teammates while they focus on the guys you can't affect... not until you get that love potion plant from a tinker."

"And me?" Viridian asked.

"Well, you're in the Protectorate, so I'm sure they've already given you plenty of ways to use your powers."

"Let's say I'm interested in what you have to say."

"Have you considered using your power to make an armored suit?" I asked.

"Why?"

"So you can go underwater or in space," I said. "Well, upper atmosphere. I've heard that powers don't work well in space."

"I'm not sure how much air I'd have," Viridian started.

"You could probably compress some," I said. "Or just make a sphere if you had to. Also, you might not always be fast enough to intercept someone before they shoot you."

She frowned.

"See, even though wizards are glass cannons, you don't have to be," I said. "You should also check out how many things you can make at once and how detailed the things you can make are."

"Detailed?"

"Can you make moving machines," I said. "Or just solid constructs. You could make shields to cover people anyway, walls to separate enemies... maybe even a magnifying glass if you wanted to start a fire. You could make mazes for your enemies to run through, cages for them. You could scoop water to put out fires, or even just cover the fire with a blanket of force until it runs out of oxygen."

Viridian looked dazed. "I've mostly been hitting things with it."

"You guys are lucky," I said. "You've got versatile powers. I'm just a brute."

"Cry me a river, He.. Hero," Sophia said. "Boo hoo, my power is boring. All I can do is blow up the planet."

"Well, I live here," I said. "Blowing it up would be stupid."

"It'd still be cool being able to do it," she said. She scowled. "Instead of just being able to run away."

"Well, according to Alexandria I don't run away enough, so you'll have to help me with that," I said. I grinned. "You know with my power they'll be making me get hurt a lot, right?"

"You'd think the Youth Guard would have something to say about that," Viridian said.

"Not a peep," I said. "I'm not even sure they know I exist, and I'm glad. I want to kill the Endbringers someday, and I'll never get there by playing it safe."

Alexandria had told me the Endbringers were going to end the world, and she'd hinted that Scion might be involved too. That meant that I had to be ready for all of them, and if Alexandria was right, then Scion was the end boss.

"That's... ballsy," Liliander said. "How are you going to deal with the Simurgh? If you get to be stronger than Alexandria, then having her turn you would be a bitch for the world."

"I don't know yet," I admitted. "I've heard that she can see where you are aiming before you hit her. I think Leviathan would be the easiest one to beat, and even he would be pretty tough."

"Nobody calls Leviathan pretty tough," Viridian said. "Unbeatable maybe, invincible... pretty tough?"

"That's Sparta for you," Sophia said. "Everybody else sees the Ash Beast as invincible, she goes eh, how bad could it hurt, really?"

"Pretty bad," I said. "But I'm ten times as strong and tough now, which means that I could probably last ten times as long. I might be able to get to him, if my muscles didn't all cramp up from the pain."

Sophia stared at me.

"I'm not going to do it," I said. "Not till I get a lot stronger. Maybe when I get ten times as strong as I am now. It'll hurt me a hundredth of what it hurt me last time, and I'll stick my arm in to test the waters."

"You plan to jump back into the fire," Sophia said flatly.

"Someday," I said. "Not until I'm strong enough. I'm going to kill that guy when I get the chance though."

"Should you be talking about killing someone in front of law officers?" Liliander asked.

"He's got a kill order," Viridian said. "Not that anyone would ever be able to do anything about it. You really plan to jump back into a fire that almost killed you?"

"It hurt worse than anything I ever experienced in my life," I admitted. "And that includes being stabbed with Kaiser's spikes, being shredded by Night's weird claw thingies, being beaten by the ABB..."

"Isn't that a reason NOT to do it again?" Liliander asked. "Are you crazy?"

"I'm not going to let Ash Beast beat me," I said. "Not Ash Beast, not Alexandria, not Leviathan or Simurgh or Behemoth. If that means I have to take some pain in the meantime, then I'm willing to do what it takes."

"Bitch is crazy," Sophia said in an exaggerated whisper, as though I wasn't laying less that five feet away from her. "But she's got your back, and that's worth overlooking a hell of a lot of crazy."

I shot her the middle finger.

"We've got to get through tomorrow," I said. "And they're going to keep making us come to this camp until they think that we've shaped up. Why not give them what they want?"

"I thought you got off on this kind of training?" Sophia asked.

"Well, the physical part," I said. "I don't like Alexandria being such a bitch. The faster we can work together, the faster they'll let us all go home. I can pull ships around on my own if that's all she's going to do."

Swerve, Liliander and Viridian all seemed interested. Aphrodite was more diffident; I suspected that she still didn't buy into the idea that she needed anyone else. Maybe tomorrow would convince her differently.


	42. Horror

My eyes snapped open when I felt Alexandria's Ki approaching the barracks.

I'd been practicing spending more and more of my time paying attention to Ki until it was an omnipresent part of my background life. Normally there was so much life in the city that it blended into the background, but out here, any life stood out.

It surprised me that I was keeping my awareness of Ki on even when I slept.

In any case, I had seen enough military movies to know what was coming; I leaped to my feet and I kicked Sophia's bed.

"Alexandria's coming," I hissed in her ear.

Sophia was already rising to her feet as I headed for the door. She'd had too many late nights as Shadow Stalker with having to get up for school in the morning to be overly attached to sleep.

Apparently none of the others were the same. None of them had even budged.

By the time the door slammed open, Sophia and I were standing at attention. Alexandria visibly started when she turned on the light and saw me standing at attention right next to the door.

"I felt you coming," I said in a low voice. I barely kept myself from smirking.

She stared at me for a fraction of a moment, and then her fist lashed out and I found myself flying through the back wall of the barracks. Did she do this to every Brute, or was it just me?

By the time I returned to the barracks she was blowing a whistle and screaming for everyone to get up. I got in line with the others, and she started criticizing our performance, both in getting up and in getting our beds made.

"Some of you might wonder why I punched Sparta through the back wall," Alexandria said finally, once everyone was standing at attention in their skivvies, even Aphrodite, the last to get up.

No one spoke.

"Why do you think I did that, Shadowstalker?"

Sophia visibly fought the urge to say something snarky. She couldn't be sure that Alexandria wouldn't do something to her.

"I'm not sure, ma'am."

"Who woke you up?" Alexandria asked.

"Sparta, ma'am."

"Why didn't she wake the others?" Alexandria asked.

Sophia was silent.

The truth was that there hadn't been time, unless I'd been willing to make a lot of noise. I'd wanted to surprise Alexandria, get a little back from her for the day before.

"You are supposed to be a team, but she chose to only wake the person from her home town. In a team, everyone is supposed to work together. Your success is her success. Your failure is her failure."

I found myself feeling a little guilty. I had been looking forward to being the only one up, and while I doubted that I'd have been able to wake any of the others, I should have at least made the effort.

"We've got a twelve hour run this morning," Alexandria said. "And then a shower, and then breakfast. After that, the real day can begin."

Everyone groaned.

* * *

Three figures were waiting for us outside the city.

One even I recognized. His robes were unmistakable. The wizard of Chicago was one of the most famous parahumans alive, behind Alexandria, Eidolon and Legend. Myrddin looked more impressive in person than he'd looked on television, possibly because our television was a dinky little thing that had never worked all that well.

The woman beside him I did not know. She was wearing a red Kimono over a skin tight body suit. She was carrying a lantern on a stick. She felt powerful to my Ki, although not as powerful as Myrddin himself.

The last man seemed to be a silhouette of a person, built of interlocking two dimensional images. He was carrying guns and an ax, which seemed unusual for heroes at least. It was my understanding that heroes generally didn't use guns because it encouraged the opposition to do the same. Considering that most heroes weren't bulletproof, it was generally held.

"I'm sure you recognize your opponents today," Alexandria said from behind me. "They don't all belong to the same Protectorate teams, but they've all had experience in working with other Capes as a unit. We'll be repeating the exercise from yesterday, except that today you will all be on the offensive. They will be your opponents."

I couldn't remember exactly what Myrddin was capable of, but I'm sure Sophia or one of the others could fill me in. I knew he liked to style it as magic, but magic didn't exist. Parahuman powers tended to be limited and specific.

Alexandria opened her mouth to speak again, and then she frowned. She lifted her hand to her ear and said, "Alexandria here. Say again."

Her face became grim.

"Today's exercises are suspended," she said. "The Nine have attacked Brockton Bay, and we are needed there."

I could hear the indrawn breaths of the others.

"Is my Dad all right?" I asked. My secret identity didn't matter if my dad was dead.

Alexandria shook her head. "Shatterbird exploded all the glass in the city. He was injured, but not seriously. I can't say the same for the rest of the city."

"I need to go," I said.

"Wait for transport," Alexandria said. "At your current speed it would take you an hour to reach Brockton Bay. Transport will be available in fifteen minutes. In the meantime, your suits and equipment will be provided for you."

"We're all going?" Aphrodite asked.

Sophia and I scowled at her. We had friends and family in Brockton Bay who might be injured or dead. The thought that she would just sit things out because she was afraid of the Nine was infuriating.

"We're all going," Alexandria said. "As heroes this is the essence of what we do; we fight even if the odds are against us."

"Endbringer fights are voluntary," Aphrodite said.

"These people aren't Endbringers," Sophia replied. "They are human shit stains. They've been doing whatever the hell they wanted for practically forever, and nobody has even tried to stop them. Didn't you become a hero to protect your city?"

"I've never even been to Brockton Bay," Aphrodite muttered.

"Who's to say that they won't come to your city next?" Sophia asked. "I've had enough of people thinking that they can stomp all over my city just because they think we can't protect ourselves."

"If she doesn't want to go, leave her," I said. "We don't have time to babysit cowards."

"What will we even do when we get there?" Liliander asked.

"My Ki sense can tell the difference between Capes and ordinary people, with a range of tens of miles," I said.

The others heads all snapped toward me as the implication of that sunk in. It meant that secret identities weren't a secret from me, not really.

"When we get there, I will get a map of the city. I've recently thinned the number of Capes in town by a considerable number, which means that if we eliminate those capes who are known, then those that are left are probably the nine. I can tell stronger capes from weaker too, which means that it will be even easier."

"They all have kill orders," Alexandria said. "The most worrisome members are Bonesaw, who theoretically has the ability to release a plague as she dies, and the Siberian, who seems to be an irresistible force. She was able to injure even me, which is something that even the Endbringers have never been able to do."

"Crawler won't be any joke either," Viridian said. "And Jack Slash has been tricky."

"Make no mistake," Alexandria said. "None of them are to be underestimated. After what happened with Hero..."

For the first time she looked genuinely angry.

"The Protectorate demanded that I avoid engaging the Siberian, because it was deemed that I was too important for Endbringer fights," she said. She looked angry. "Otherwise I would have gone after them a long time ago."

"I'm not staying away," I said.

"I'm not expecting you to," Alexandria said. "Short of physically holding you down, finding a master who can control you or sending you to another universe, I can't really stop you from going there."

The others were staring at me. Even after they'd seen me dragging a destroyer, they still hadn't had any idea of just how powerful I had become. They'd obviously thought that Sophia's bragging was hyperbole.

"I'm going to kill as many of them as I can find," I said. I turned to the others. "It might be dangerous, but other than killing an Endbringer, nothing any of you will ever do will help more people than stopping these monsters."

They were staring at me now, even Peregrine and Viridian, who were actual Protectorate members.

"I could use your help. Most of the Nine are people that I shouldn't have a lot of trouble with, but there are those who are different. Viridian would be perfect to fight Bonesaw; she could make an airtight sphere that would prevent her viruses from getting out into the air."

I pointed at Peregrine. "You can see through the eyes of birds, on a citywide scale. I'll need your help when I start to point parahumans out on the map. The faster we can find and deal with the Nine, the few casualties there will be, and the less trauma there will be from whatever they were planning on doing."

Both Viridian and Peregrine nodded grimly. Neither of them protested about being asked to work together; the situation was too serious.

"I'll need Liliander on crowd control," I said. "Because the one thing that we know is that people panic when they see the Nine. You are uniquely suited to handling people and forcing them to stay safe."

"And me?" Swerve asked.

I hesitated. "You'll be up front with me."

It was possible that I was sending her to her death. The Siberian had wounded even Alexandria, who was supposed to be invulnerable. Did Swerve's power trump the Siberian's, which so far at least had trumped all other powers?

I could see it on her face too. She looked down, took a deep breath and finally nodded.

The tinker raised his hand timidly. "Should I come?"

I shook my head. "Mannequin likes to focus on Tinkers who can make the world a better place. I'm not sure that there's anything you could do that someone else could not, and there is always a possibility that he'll fixate on you while I'm not there."

Alexandria looked bemused that I was suddenly giving orders, but she didn't contradict me, so I took that as tacit approval of my plans.

I ignored Aphrodite, who looked put out, even though she'd been arguing against going just a moment before. I guess a girl just wanted to be invited.

"Once we get there, things are going to heat up fast," I said. "I'm not sure how well the rest of the Brockton bay Protectorate will feel about a fourteen year old giving orders, but I don't care about that."

Sophia was staring at me.

"Nobody is going to turn my city into a horror movie. Nobody has the right. The Slaughterhouse Nine has been able to run around unimpeded for far too long, and we finally have a chance to find them. They can run, but they can't hide."

"Don't get cocky," Alexandria murmured in a low voice that only Sophia and I could hear.

"If you could sense exactly where they were, what would you do?" I asked.

The others were all suddenly attentive.

"I'd nuke them from orbit," she admitted. "I wouldn't give them a chance to speak or to do anything. A sniper bullet from ten miles away if I could manage it."

"That's what I'm going to do," I said. "I love a good fight as much as anyone, but these people aren't opponents to be fought. They are to be put down."

She nodded.

"Can we get a briefing on the current known members and powers of the Nine while we're in transit?" I asked.

"You'll be going by Strider," she said. "But there will be a briefing when you get there."

Their reign of terror hadn't been without its casualties. Sometimes they killed their own members and sometimes heroes got lucky and killed one of two of them. My hope was to kill more than just a few. I needed to cripple their organization.

If I'd been angry at Alexandria for disrespecting me, this was something on an entirely different level. They had attacked my home while I wasn't there to defend it. It was the ultimate form of disrespect, and I was going to make them pay for that.

"Let's get moving people," I said. "Get dressed, get equipped and get ready to bring your A game."

They all nodded, and moments later Strider appeared.

His teleportation felt different than the teleportation that I'd felt before, but there were some things in common between the two of them. I had a feeling if I could figure out what that was that I might be able to do something similar.

He had a set of packs on the floor.

"Ladies and gentlemen I will be transporting you directly to the Brockton Bay headquarters, where you will be shown to changing rooms."

Aphrodite and Capsule conspicuously stepped away. I noticed that Myrddin and the others who had been going to be our opponents didn't step forward either.

I glanced at them, and Alexandria said, "The Nine have been known to attack one city, and then move to another that is left undefended while people search for them in the first. We will be watching over our own cities. We wish you luck."

"There will be a briefing in twenty minutes, so don't spend too much time getting dressed," Strider said. He looked at me and said, "You especially."

"I won't," I said. "I've got a clown or two to kill."

A moment later the world changed around us. We were on a pad at the top of the rig, and I looked out at the city. I could see smoke from dozens of fires all over the city.

There weren't any PRT agents waiting for us, and so Sophia and I gestured for the others to follow us. They grabbed their bags, and followed.

There was glass everywhere on the floor, and I stiffened as I saw a body laying sticking out of a hallway. It was a PRT agent. The faceless masks they wore had apparently contained enough Silicon for Shatterbird to shatter them, because what was left of his face looked like hamburger.

I could hear Liliander throwing up behind me.

Kneeling down to check the body would be useless; it didn't even have a trace of Ki remaining. I felt other life forces on the levels beneath us, but there weren't as many as there should have been, not nearly enough. Some of the people I was sensing were unfamiliar to me.

"Something is wrong," I said. "We're going to find a room and get dressed. The boys can dress in the room across the hall. I'll try to keep track of any life forces approaching, but I can't track enemy drones or mechanical assailants, so you need to keep your eyes peeled."

They nodded, and we moved into adjoining rooms to change as quickly as we could.

"This is like a horror movie," Liliander said. Her costume was green and tight fitting, more than I would have expected from a ward, even thought it covered her up to the neck There were floral leaf designs. It didn't look like it would be particularly protective, and I mentally cursed the PRT publicity department. They cared more about action figure sales than they did about whether gear was tactically useful.

No wonder she was so bitter about her powers.

"I want you to stay behind me," I said. I stiffened as I felt Ki signatures suddenly fading beneath me, even as three were rising up the elevator toward us.

I suddenly felt something strange coming over me; my thoughts seemed to slow to a crawl even as the energy was being pulled from my limbs. I could see a mist forming in the air, and my breath was suddenly visible as a wave of cold filled the room.

From down the hall I heard the sound of laughter; it didn't sound like anything human. There was something fundamentally wrong with it, and I could see from the expressions of horror on the faces of the others that they thought so too.

However, none of them seemed to have the energy to move.

Fewer and fewer Ki signatures were below us, and I had a strong feeling that they weren't teleporting away.

"Hello Kiddies," I heard a voice say in a sing-song tone. "It's time to play in the big leagues. We're thrilled to get to know you up close and personal."

The hallway outside shuddered as there was a sudden slamming sound as something hit the wall heavily. It struck again, and this time it was closer.

Closer and closer the slams came, and I tightened my lips.

I'd brought these people here, promised them that I was going to lead them, and I wasn't going to let horror movie rejects destroy them before they even had a chance to fight.

I grabbed the doorknob even as I slipped my helmet on.

As I began to draw in my Ki, I noticed that the Rig actually shook again. The Ki inside me was warming, and it made the feeling of lethargy fade somewhat.

I opened the door.


	43. Fires

Sophia could see that the others were struggling even to move; the horror on their faces at the sound of laughter in the next room only increasing their panic. Although she'd never admit it to anyone, the sound stirred something primal inside of her, bringing up fears that she didn't even know that she had.

She struggled to go into her shadow state; it took longer than she would have liked, but when she did, she suddenly found whatever energy draining effect that had been making her frozen had been greatly reduced.

The fear from the echoing sounds of laughter didn't dissipate, however, which meant that it wasn't the result of a power. It was simply the fear of helplessness. Was this what every victim of the Nine felt before they were tortured and killed?

Hebert barely even seemed to notice. She slipped her helmet on, and a moment later the door to the room exploded outward as she reached out and tapped it.

Her movements had been highly controlled of late. Sophia had thought it was the result of training, but it might be because she was afraid of hurting anyone. It was a good thing that she was leaving Winslow; sooner or later even Emma would notice that something was up.

"Monkey girl, monkey girl," Sophia heard a whisper from the next room. "We've been looking for you."

It took her a moment to realize that they were talking about Hebert. Those stories about Hebert being the were-monkey that had menaced the city had been posted by some members of the media who hadn't liked how she'd handled the press conference.

They'd been vicious in their articles, wondering how the PRT could hire someone who was obviously such a menace to the general public. Strangely enough, those articles had never been followed up, something Sophia had assumed was due to the PRT throwing their weight around.

As much as she hated the PRT and Protectorate, she respected how they used power. They were as ruthless in using it as any gang, and they would destroy a reputation without a single qualm if it served their interests. Several reporters had likely learned that to their eventual regret.

Still, it meant that the Nine had only had to pick up a newspaper or read an online blog to find out about Hebert. It was the same thing that made it easy for Mannequin for find out about Tinkers who tried to change the world in good ways. There were probably people who didn't even try for fear of attracting him.

Sophia ghosted through the door; even though it didn't look like there was power here, she wasn't going to risk going through the walls. The Rig was heavily electrified. The back up power was probably on at a low level just for the emergency systems.

If power was fully on, she might have been able to access the containment foam sprayers. However, Sophia doubted that any of the monitors were working. The PRT agents downstairs would have tried the sprayers, assuming they hadn't been overcome too quickly.

Were any of the heroes downstairs, dead or dying? How had the Nine managed to break in, and didn't they realize that this was going to invite massive reprisal? While the Siberian might be invulnerable, the others weren't, and no one thought the Siberian would be able to reform the Nine if the others were dead.

"What have you done to everyone?" Hebert asked. To her credit her voice sounded strong and unafraid. It almost sounded heroic. Sophia never would have expected it from her a few months ago.

Of course, being able to carry battleships did a lot to shore up one's courage.

Sophia shadowed through the door and she stopped. At the end of the hall were three people; unlike Hebert, Sophia had studied capes, especially the Nine, and she knew exactly who they were.

Winter was the woman with white hair, with white irises edged in black. Rumor had it that she'd been a child soldier and later an arms dealer before joining the Nine. She was the one draining everyone's will to live. She was known to enjoy torture.

In the center of the hallway stood a tall, pear shaped clown. He was the one giggling. Chuckles was known to have super strength, and to be unable to talk for reasons unknown. All he could do was laugh.

He'd attacked a police station once, which meant that attacking the PRT headquarters was likely his idea. The Slaughterhouse Nine were nominally under the leadership of Jack Slash, but individual members had a great deal of autonomy. How he communicated to the others was unknown, but he was known to be a serial killer.

Chuckles stepped forward, and Sophia could suddenly see the third figure behind him. A large man who had a face that was a mass of scars, he held a cleaver in one hand and he stared at Hebert with a look of anticipation.

Her heart dropped. It was the boogeyman, the serial killer who specialized in parahumans. She hadn't realized that he'd joined the Nine; it must be new. He had the power to negate the powers of others, and he particularly liked to torture and kill Brutes.

She had to warn Hebert. Without her powers she only had a few weeks of martial arts training, and Hatchetface was a brute with a cleaver with years of experience in killing parahumans. She'd never stand a chance.

Sophia switched back into her human form, but the lethargy hit her suddenly and she sank to her feet. She tried to make herself speak, but nothing would come out. What had she been trying to warn Hebert about? Suddenly none of it seemed all that important.

Oh... Hatchetface. He was going to negate Hebert's powers, and then he was going to kill all of them.

"Jack wanted to say Hi, but he's got other things to do right now," Winter said. She grinned nastily. "Which means that we have a lot of time to play."

Hebert pointed her finger and a finger-thin bolt of energy lashed out, striking Chuckles in the head. It exploded, and his body was suddenly falling forward.

Winter was moving suddenly behind Hatchetface, who lunged forward. Sophia tried to turn Shadow, but suddenly her power deserted her. She still couldn't move either, and she felt a sudden terror filling her. She'd known that she was likely to die sooner or later as a vigilante, but at least her death was going to mean something.

This... this was meaningless. One more tally on a serial killer's list, a name forgotten almost as soon as people read it. Her mind screamed, but she couldn't get her body to move.

"Not so tough without your powers, are you girl?" Winter taunted. "Although I am impressed by your ability to murder without even trying to talk it out."

"Killing you isn't murder," Hebert gritted out. "It's a public service."

She didn't sound afraid at all. Didn't she feel her strength leaving her? Sophia wanted to scream, but she couldn't.

"Leave enough of her for Bonesaw to patch up," Winter said to Hatchetface. "Otherwise, have fun!"

He swung his hatchet with parahuman strength. Sophia wanted to close her eyes, but she couldn't.

The cleaver shattered into a thousand pieces as it slammed into her. The big man stared at the remnants of his weapon for a moment before dropping the handle. He swung at Hebert, who caught his fist. For a moment he struggled, but her grip was like iron. She was immovable, and he tried to pry her fingers off with his other hand.

He wasn't successful.

"You've all had it your way for too long," Hebert said. "Doing whatever you want to people and thinking no one will stop you because you have too much power."

Winter was slowly backing away toward the elevator. Apparently the thought that someone might be too powerful or simply immune to Hatchetface's power hadn't occurred to her.

"I'd give you a taste of what you've given others all these years, but I don't have the time to waste on people who ultimately don't matter. This probably isn't nearly painful enough, bnt..."

She clenched her fist and Hatchetface screamed as his fist exploded into a red paste.

Almost negligently, Hebert kicked him. His corpse exploded backward through the hall, hitting Winter. Sophia suddenly felt the lethargy that had overcome her vanish, even though the room itself was still cold.

The back wall of the elevator exploded outward as both Hatchetface and Winter's bodies went through the wall, and out across the bay and toward the Horizon.

"Are they dead?" Sophia asked. While it seemed almost foolish to even ask, parahumans had survived worse in the past.

Hebert shook blood off her hand in disgust, and Sophia saw bits of bone drop to the floor. She walked forward and wiped her hand on the bottom of the clown's.

"They're dead," Hebert said.

Considering that she was the one with the life sense, she'd know better than anyone.

"What happened?" Viridian asked shakily as she came around the corner. She stopped as she saw the body, the blood and bone on the floor and the massive gaping hole where the elevator had once been.

Everyone else was moving suddenly, released from the oppressive grip that had held them.

"It's the Slaughterhouse Six now," Sophia said quietly. Hatchetface's power hadn't affected Hebert at all. Was she simply that powerful now?

Sophia had bragged about Hebert's powers to the other girls, in part to make herself look more impressive. She hadn't realized just how deadly she could be, even after she'd seen her pulling that ship.

The crowd behind them grew and they stared at what was left of Chuckles on the floor. His head had turned into a fine red mist that had covered every available surface. The stench was incredible.

Liliander vomited, again.

Sophia fought to keep from saying something cutting. The girl had agreed to come to this, and she wasn't turning around and running even after what had just happened. Still, she would need a stronger stomach if she really wanted to be a hero.

"Three down," Hebert said. "I don't sense any other parahumans in the building, but there are still fifteen ordinary humans downstairs, and it doesn't feel like they are doing very well. Anybody have any experience in first aid?"

"We've all had the basics," Peregrine said. "But I don't think we'll be able to do much if they've done what I think they've done."

He was right.

Sophia found herself wanting to vomit as they moved from room to room downstairs. Some of the PRT agents had been flayed alive, their skin pulled from them in one continuous piece. One had his ribs splayed open in something that Sophia had heard called the blood eagle.

The woman's ribs had been pulled apart and her lungs had been pulled out to form wings. It was supposedly an ancient Norse custom, but she'd heard Empire wannabe's talking about it.

They all tried to call emergency services, but they couldn't get through. It was likely that no cell phone in town would work because they'd all been shattered. The other calls for help would have swamped 911, even if the cell phone towers hadn't been affected.

"This isn't nearly enough people to man a station," Peregrine said. "It looks like they relocated somewhere else and left a skeleton crew here."

Sophia nodded.

She didn't like the look on Hebert's face. With each PRT agent that they found dying, Hebert looked more and more like she was going to explode, which given her power now wouldn't be a good thing.

"I can feel them," Hebert said. "They're all near Arcadia."

"Why didn't Strider take us there then?" Viridian asked. "Instead of all the way out here?"

"Communications are down," Peregrine said. "They probably called out on a land line shortly after the attack happened, before the wounded swamped the phone lines. It was enough to get us here, but not enough to tell him where to go."

"Can you carry everyone?" Hebert asked Viridian.

"What?"

"Make a sphere big enough to carry everyone, and I'll carry it to where we need to go," her voice was grim. "I'm not leaving anyone behind when I do what has to be done."

Hebert was planning to go it alone.

Sophia felt a sudden surge of anger. Hadn't she had Hebert's back through all of this? She'd started to think that she might actually have a partner who was strong enough to make everything worthwhile, but now Hebert was acting like she wanted to dump all of them off.

"We're a team," Viridian said. She'd obviously picked up on Hebert's intentions as quickly as Sophia had.

"I'm not going to let anyone else die," Hebert said. The look on her face was suddenly smooth and expressionless. It was an expression that Sophia had only seen a few times, on the faces of men who were killers.

"We'll decide what to do when we get there," Viridian said.

It took Sophia a moment to remember that she was actually a full fledged member of the Protectorate. She had been staying back and letting Hebert call the shots for so long that Sophia had almost forgotten that technically she and Peregrine outranked the rest of them.

Hebert nodded.

A moment later Viridian created a cylinder that was open on one end. Sophia gingerly stepped into it and she was followed by the others. It stretched out to fill much of the hall. Viridian followed at the very back and the cylinder closed.

A moment later there was a jolt as Hebert carefully picked them up and began to move forward. Sophia carefully didn't go shadow; she wasn't sure that she wouldn't fall through the force construct and end up in the bay.

It only took a few seconds before they were through the hole in the back of the elevator, and they were in the sky.

There were too many fires across the city for it to e any member of the Nine that she knew of. Jack Slash literally had a knife. The Siberian did slashing damage as well. Crawler did crushing and acid damage. Bonesaw could have made a plague that would kill everyone, but she didn't make fires.

Mannequin had the technology, but he tended to focus on tinkers. This looked widespread and pervasive. What in the hell had happened?

"I don't like the fact that they left their base practically unmanned," Peregrine said. "Something big must have happened, more than just the usual injuries from a Shatterbird attack."

Sophia had to agree. It almost looked like an Endbringer had attacked, but there hadn't been any alarms.

Hebert slowed as they approached one of the sources of fires. She could see a mass of people below them swarming toward police officers in Riot gear. They were swarming over them.

Dipping even lower, Hebert got close enough that they could see what was happening. People were attacking the police with their hands and their teeth, Many people had blood on their mouths, and they were moving with an unnatural speed. Their limbs didn't seem to move right, moving almost like they were spiders trapped inside of human skin suits.

"Damn," Hebert said. "Bonesaw just started the Zombie apocalypse."

Sophia stared down at the people below. The greenish blue tint of the cylinder made the blood on their mouths look black. It suddenly occurred to her that her own family was down there in that; they might even be part of the crowd that was now eating policemen.

Would it be better for them to be the victims or the monsters? Sophia didn't know.

All she knew was that it was suddenly important that they get to people who knew what was going on. They needed to find Panacea and see if she could cure whatever the hell this was before it spread and killed everyone.

Sophia felt sick. Looking at all the fires she knew this meant it had already spread outside the city. Would they even be able to contain this?

The world wasn't supposed to end this way, not with something that you couldn't fight without killing your family, your friends or your neighbors.

If Panacea was dead, finding someone else who could deal with all of this would be impossible, not in the time they had.

"We need to find Panacea," Hebert said.

Sophia nodded. The cylinder suddenly changed direction.

Panacea wasn't with the rest of the Protectorate? Sophia had a bad feeling about this.


	44. Orbit

Panacea was absolutely vital to any chance that we would have to get the situation under control. She was the only one who could counteract whatever virus was causing the people below to turn into rage monsters, and if she died, then I was going to have to kill them all.

They weren't zombies, not really. I could feel that with my Ki sense. Their hearts still beat and their lungs still pumped, but they weren't operating like normal people. It would have almost been easier if they'd actually been dead. I would have simply wiped them off the map. But as people who might still be saved, the situation was very different.

"We need to get to her before the Nine do," I said. "They are probably recruiting."

Sophia was staring at me through the bluish green force field as though I'd grown a second head.

"I've read a little about the Nine," I said defensively. "Back when I was a civilian. I've been busy since then."

They liked to test their recruits, putting them through scenarios that were designed to be horrendous both for the recruit and for the surrounding community. The last thing anyone needed was Panacea as a member of the Nine. If they wanted her it was because they thought she could do more than heal.

She'd as much as admitted once that she'd kept me from regrowing my tail because she didn't think that I'd want it. If she could keep me from regrowing a tail, did that mean that she could make me grow one? Could she do that to anyone, and maybe much, much worse?

The Nine obviously thought so. Either that or they were going to kill her so that she wouldn't be able to undo whatever Bonesaw had done to destroy things.

Either way, I could feel Ki signatures converging on Panacea fast.

I put on a little steam, and the streets blurred beneath us. Normally I'd have worried about creating a sonic boom this close to the ground, but there weren't a single window left in the city that I'd break.

It only took a second to reach her, and I saw that she was running. Her hand was bandaged, and it looked like it was soaked with blood. Her chest was heaving; I doubted that she'd had to do much jogging in her line of work, and she had probably never thought she'd have to run for her life.

"We're going to scoop her up," I said. "We've got company coming, and I need you to protect her."

Viridian nodded soberly.

Handles appeared on the sides of the cylinder; I let it drop and then I grabbed the handles at the top. Everyone inside staggered or fell, but a moment later the front of the cylinder opened up.

Amy Dallon looked behind her and then up at me. She let herself be pulled into the cylinder, and then I was in the air.

I'd have them back to PRT headquarters before anyone realized she was gone. Once that happened, I'd return and give them an unexpected-

Something slammed into me, and I was forced to drop the cylinder. Viridian was on top of it, though. She managed to create a massive airbag below to shield them all, even though the cylinder itself vanished.

Still, that meant they were out and unprotected.

It took me a moment to realize that I was being slashed at by a black and white figure. It was the Siberian, and I hadn't sensed her Ki signature at all!

I screamed as she cut me deeply. I shouldn't have been surprised. She'd been able to cut Alexandria, who'd been invulnerable to everything else.

As she clawed at me again I dodged. She was fast, but I was faster. Still, she was clearly a better fighter than I was, and it was all I could do not to be disemboweled.

Was she shielding her KI? Was that possible?

She had black and white stripes and as I struggled not to be slashed I saw a savage joy in her glowing yellow eyes.

Below I could see Jack Slash and Crawler approaching the others. None of them were strong enough to take on Crawler; I felt fire as my abdomen was slashed because of my inattention.

I felt a fourth signature a couple of blocks away. Was it Shatterbird? Were they holding someone in reserve? I couldn't afford to speculate.

I pointed at Jack and Ki exploded outwards. Crawler gleefully leaped to intercept the ray, even as the Siberian grabbed my arm.

I hit her in the abdomen, but it was like striking a steel wall, well, like it would have been before I'd gained my powers. I felt the bones in my hand break.

Grimacing, I let Ki explode as it struck her. It sprayed around her, almost like the waves of a river moving around a rock. Several roofs nearby caught fire from the barest interaction with it.

"Monkey Queen, Monkey Queen," Jack called up to me mockingly. "What chaos we could create together. It's only too bad that we're here after a bigger prize."

A line of oak trees suddenly exploded out of the pavement in between Jack and Crawler and the others. They started running the moment that Jack's vision was obscured, and he gestured. Crawler began to gallop forward, charging toward the trees.

The Siberian sliced me again and again; I wanted to go down to grab Panacea and the others, but the Siberian was fast enough that if I stopped fighting her she would likely just slaughter them all.

There were cuts on my arms and my legs, on my abdomen and even on my face. Her claws lashed out at my face and I felt agonizing pain in one eye; I felt blood and possibly other fluids falling down my face. Fighting without depth perception was a lot harder, and the wounds started to accumulate more and more.

Crawler was exploding through the trees, which shattered as his bulk moved through them. He was grinning, if that was what a grin looked like on a face that inhuman.

He was a black, six legged dinosaur looking thing the size of a van. The gash my Ki blast had put into his side was already visibly healing, and it had only been seconds.

I punched the Siberian with my good hand over and over again, but all it did was make her grin more widely. She was fast enough that my kicks never reached her. She was a monster; Alexandria had tried to warn me, but I'd thought I would have at least some effect on her. Why wasn't I affecting her?

It wasn't just raw strength; she was seemingly immune to almost everything. The laws of physics didn't seem to apply to her at all.

Why couldn't I even sense her?

I couldn't sense her any more than I could sense Viridian's force constructs.

Suddenly I felt stupid. There was a reason that the Siberian didn't register with me, why she didn't seem to comply with any of the laws of physics. She wasn't real.

That meant that the fourth signature was probably that of her master.

She must have seen something in my eyes, because she suddenly sprang back from me. I felt blood flooding from wounds that I hadn't even realized that I had. I felt a little woozy, but I knew what I had to do.

I pointed in the direction of the signature, and my Ki flashed out.

If it had been an ordinary energy blast, even the Siberian wouldn't have been able to stop it. After all, ordinary energy moves at the speed of light, and no one had reflexes that were that fast.

My beams were considerably slower, however.

The Siberian interposed between herself and the signature, and I began shooting beams at it as I moved closer to the running figures of the others.

The Siberian disappeared, presumably to move her master. Jack was gone; I could feel him moving away at a rate that meant he had to be on a vehicle. I hesitated. There were too many buildings between me and him by now for me to safely blast him from here, not without risking destroying houses and killing someone.

Crawler was getting entirely too close to the others, and if I stopped to fight him there was no guarantee that Jack wouldn't backtrack with some of the others to finish Panacea or some of the others off. There was also a risk that the Siberian would take the opportunity to attack me from behind. I'd threatened her master and I knew their secret; she had to want me dead badly.

I had to focus on the mission. I could find Jack later and make him regret what he'd done.

"I'll kill you later," I called out to Crawler, and a moment later I was past him.

He stopped suddenly, staring up at me eagerly. He was a horribly mutated monster, but I could understand his desire to improve himself. It was the same desire that had overwhelmed me since I'd gotten this power. At least mine didn't leave me unable to interact with normal people.

"Cylinder!" I called out.

Viridian looked back at me, and her eyes widened. She gestured curtly to the others and they gathered quickly around her.

She made another cylinder and a moment later they were all inside it. A moment after that we were in the air, and I was blasting again at the Siberian's master so that she would not intercept us.

We reached the helipad on top of the PRT headquarters a moment later. The building had unfortunately been one of those buildings that had been largely composed of windows. Those were now simply dark, gaping wounds in the side of the building. Massive piles of glass were outside on the concrete, and I had little doubt that if anyone had been there when the glass had fallen they were now dead.

I dropped the cylinder heavily to the roof of the helipad.

Why did I suddenly feel so weak? I looked down and my costume was torn to shreds. Blood was oozing out of dozens of wounds that I didn't even remember taking.

I fell to one knee.

"Panacea!" Shadow Stalker screamed.

A moment later, everything went black.

By the time I woke, I felt the familiar feeling of power rushing through my veins. I felt better than I'd ever felt in my life. Twice as strong, and ready to reach out and find the ones who had done this.

I was inside a room; there were dozens of people in the room and Panacea had already moved on to the next one. Apparently the face masks the PRT agents had been wearing had silicate based HUDs inside; a disastrous combination when Shatterbird decided to sing her song.

I looked up and I saw Dad. His arm was in a sling, and it looked like Panacea hadn't gotten to him yet.

"What happened?" I asked.

"You lost an eye," he said. "Panacea had to grow it back. Fighting the Siberian? She killed Hero and almost killed Alexandria."

"She's a projection," I said. "Created by someone a few blocks away. That's why nobody had ever been able to kill her."

He blinked. "That information is huge if it's true."

"She ran when I started targeting her master," I said. "I never saw him, but the next time we meet I'll kill him, and when he goes, she'll go to."

His lips tightened, and he leaned forward.

"Glory Girl is dead," he said in a low voice. "So is the rest of her family. Panacea is barely hanging on; she thinks that the reason it happened was because they were grooming her to be a better version of Bonesaw."

I glanced at Amy Dallon, and my lips tightened.

"What about the zombies?" I asked/

"The Ragers?" he asked. "They're highly contagious. One bite and you're one of them, and being a parahuman isn't any defense. Half the Wards were at a publicity event when they were attacked; some of them are out there, and they are still able to use their powers."

"So what do we do?" I asked. "I can't just strafe the crowd, not if there is a cure coming."

"Strider is gathering massive amounts of containment foam; we're stripping cities all over the country. Panacea says she knows how to create a virus that will reverse the effects of what Bonesaw did; she's already made several batches and set them to growing in the containment foam. She says the foam will hold them still long enough for the effect to reverse itself."

"Why me?" I asked.

"You're the only flyer left. Kid Win and Aegis are among the infected and Glory Girl and the rest of New Wave are dead."

"And if I get infected?" I asked.

"Don't," he said. "You'll be hell to cure, and I suspect that as strong as you are now you could easily destroy the city."

"I feel like I could destroy the state," I admitted.

"Where are they now?" he asked.

"Heading north, toward Boston," I said. "I've killed three of them, and apparently Jack decided that I wasn't the girl he wanted to monkey around with."

"This isn't the time for joking," he said, scowling at me. "A lot of people are dead. You probably would have survived, but fighting with one eye is a bitch."

"I'm going to kill the rest of them," I said. "I've got a two hundred and fifty mile range on my Ki sense now, and I know the scent of three of them. If I have to fly all over the country I'll find them, and it will be sooner than later."

"Do it later," Dad said. "People are dying right now, and the longer we wait the more people are going to die. The police were some of the first people to go."

"What if Bonesaw does this in Boston before I stop her?"

Dad frowned. "So what do you want to do?"

"Fight them," I said. "Before they get to Boston."

"And this?" he asked.

"I can fly fast," I said. "But if I fly too fast we'll never get the distribution that we'll need; the containment foam will just blow away. I'll bet it'll take three days before I'll be able to stop long enough to go after them."

"So what, then?"

"I don't know," I said. "Maybe I can call Dragon and have her call an air strike on them while they are skill in range. It won't kill Crawler, but they might be able to kill the Siberian and the others."

I'd wanted to see the look in the Siberian's eyes when she realized that I'd killed her master, and through that had killed her.

"Even if I manage to catch the people on the streets, there will be all sorts of people hidden inside buildings. All it would take would be one getting loose to start it all over again."

"You can detect the difference," Dad said. "I know that because I can, although my range is still pretty limited. We're going to need your help when we start going house to house."

I gritted my teeth. "And how long is all this going to take?"

"As long as it takes," he said. "If even one of those people get out of the city it could start spreading across the country. It would never end."

"And the Slaughterhouse?"

"If they do the same thing they did here, then you'll be ordered to drop everything and go after them. They know that and they'll probably go away to lick their wounds."

I scowled. It all made sense, but I didn't have to like it.

"Well, until they get out of range, I want Dragon to make things hot for them."

"You'll have to use a landline," he said. "I'll call the PRT in Boston and have them patch you in to Dragon. It won't be easy to find them without a computer screen to match up when you are sensing with the map; my bet is that they'll air drop some equipment if they have to."

I nodded.

"I have a bad feeling that I'm not going to have much time for anything over the next few days."

"Current estimates are that there are thirty thousand infected in town," Dad said. "If we had full access to PRT forces and equipment and the Brockton Bay Police force had all of their men, it might not be so hard to contain this."

"Why aren't we getting reinforcements from other branches of the PRT?" I asked. "Maybe even the National Guard?"

"Panacea says a reliable vaccine will take her longer to make than the actual cure."

"Why?" I asked. "Isn't it usually easier to keep people from getting a virus than to cure it?"

He shrugged. "I don't understand it myself. She says that Bonesaw designed the virus so that a specific cure could be easily made, but she didn't want a vaccine, so Panacea will have to work from scratch."

"Is she sure that this cure isn't actually a trap?" I asked skeptically. "Something that would actually be worse than what we've got now?"

"She seems reasonably sure."

I frowned. "So Bonesaw wanted to be able to dangle a cure in front of us, possibly as a bargaining chip. It probably would have been some horrible choice, like giving up the President or something."

"So people can be cured, but nobody can be made immune until Panacea has worked out how to do it." I said. I sighed. "Why don't I just fly over to Boston and call Dragon from there? It looks like Panacea is working on getting the PRT back on its feet and I guess the cure is growing? That means I have time."

Dad stared at me, then sighed. "And if you happen to come across the Nine on your way to Boston?"

"I'll nuke them from orbit," I said. I grinned unpleasantly. "I'll be back before you know it."


	45. Slaughterhouse

I was pretty sure that Dad hadn't wanted me going after the Nine. He'd created enough excuses after all; who actually looks for a landline these days, especially when Boston was untouched and only eighty miles away.

For me, that was a trip that would take a couple of minutes; I'd have spent longer trying to find a land line. And if I was already on the way to Boston, why not murder the rest of the Nine while I was at it?

I'd have to completely destroy Bonesaw and all the air around her of course, otherwise it was possible that she could make a plague that made the Rager plague look like peanuts. The fact that she hadn't told me that the Rager plague had been meant to be a distraction.

She could have just as easily made it airborne, in which case the entire city would have been under quarantine by the time I got back.

It meant that I would have to kill her before she had a chance to realize that I was there, and unfortunately, I didn't have her particular parahuman signature in mind as I'd never met her before. Right now I only knew Jack and Crawler, and whoever was controlling the Siberian. I would have to hope that Shatterbird and Bonesaw were with them. It was possible that there was a ninth member; their roster tended to change fairly often, given that sometimes heroes (and even villains sometimes) got lucky occasionally.

I could detect the right number of parahumans moving away, but it was possible that they'd scattered and were just holding parahuman hostages. I had to be sure, but if I got too close the Siberian would shred me like before. I wouldn't be distracted by having to protect anyone else, and I was twice as strong now and faster, but even if I could destroy her she'd just reform shortly later.

They were in a vehicle, I was almost sure of it. The speed they were traveling and the fact that they were all together was consistent with that. The Siberian's master was following behind, though. Didn't she trust her teammates enough to be close to them? Maybe not.

I wouldn't, given what I knew about the Nine.

My blasts were slow enough that they could be dodged. That was a problem. It meant that I simply couldn't obliterate them before they realized it, not unless I took them entirely by surprise. They probably had hostages too; from the distance I was at Parahumans were much more obvious than regular people.

My best bet would be to come in high, from the clouds. Most people didn't ever look up, and if they were in a car their view would be blocked by the roof of the vehicle. If they didn't have hostages I could simply blast down and it would all be over.

A sinister part of me thought that even if they had hostages I might not stop. After all, what were the lives of five or even ten people compared to the thousands who had already died and the thousands more who would die in the future.

Realistically, I only had to kill the Siberian's master and Bonesaw. Jack couldn't do much to me, and while Crawler might be a terrible fight, he wasn't able to destroy more than he could personally touch. I could probably throw him into the middle of the ocean and it would take him weeks to get back to land.

Bonesaw could destroy the world, and the Siberian could destroy me personally. None of the others were a real threat.

If they had hostages, I'd have to deal with the Siberian and Bonesaw and then see what happened.

They'd bypassed Boston and were moving away quickly; almost a hundred miles an hour. They probably weren't worried about police, not when the Siberian would simply shred any policemen brave or stupid enough to try to stop them before he could ask for help.

The sky was cloudy, which was fortunate. It would give me the cover I needed to do what had to be done.

I flew above the clouds. At this height I should have had trouble breathing; I had a sense that I couldn't do this forever, but it wouldn't bother me for a lot longer than this would take. A human would have passed out already.

I passed them underneath me. As far as I knew, none of the Nine were thinkers; nothing I'd ever read said that the Siberian had the kind of enhanced senses that would let her know that I was up here.

Her master was alone, too. Perfect.

"Ka...Me...Ha...Me...HA!" I said, gathering my Ki. Power exploded from me, and I was startled at just how much there was of it. Had it been this long since I had enhanced my blasts? I was six thousand times as strong now as the last time I had done this; more probably. Maybe this was a mistake.

It was too late now.

The beam blasted down, not where the Siberian's master was, but where she was going to be. It meant that there was a chance that the Siberian would see the blast, but I couldn't risk hitting behind the van.

I dropped down beneath the clouds to see the thirty foot wide ball of energy flashing down toward looked like a small caravan of cars. They did have hostages; it looked like most of them were aboard a Greyhound bus. Crawler's signature was in a Greyhound bus that was following behind. Fortunately my blast had been focused on the van that was three blocks behind them.

They were passing what looked like an abandoned gas station. There wasn't anyone alive in it

The Siberian was crouched on top of the van, looking up at me. She had one hand on top of the van. Damn. She could make things invulnerable by touch.

The blast hit the road, and a moment later the air pressure from the blast expanded outward in a visible wave. The gas station, made of concrete blocks simply crumbled and blew away, even though it was more than three hundred feet away.

The Greyhound bus and the semi went flying, even though they were a tenth of a mile away. The effects of the blast just kept expanding and expanding; I stared, horrified. I hadn't meant for something like this to happen. This seemed out of proportion to how strong my pure physical strength had grown.

Something slammed into me. It was the Siberian; apparently her master hadn't died and she'd decided that attacking me was better than trying to run; that would have left her companions at my mercy.

I dodged her. It was easier this time, both because I was considerably faster than I was before, and I wasn't distracted by having to protect my teammates. Even better, I knew her fighting style now. She was still better than I was, but the advantage in speed was gone, and with it, my chances were better.

I grinned at her as I dodged again. I lashed out with blasts of power, aimed downward, forcing her to interpose herself between me and her master. I did it again and again. She snarled at me, and claws at me. It hurt badly, but I wasn't so unprepared this time.

There was something that I'd been wanting to try; something that I'd seen Legend do. He could control his blasts and make them turn corners. My blasts were slow enough that I could perceive them, and it was possible that I could...

Yes.

The blast seemingly missed the van the Siberian's master was driving, and she turned back toward me. I gave a sudden jerk of my hand, and the ball of energy moved in midair as it was about to hit the ground.

The Siberian's eyes opened wide as the van exploded in a blast of blinding white light. I grinned at her, and a moment later she was gone forever.

Four down.

Some of the people on the bus were dead; I couldn't be sure if it was the crash or something the Nine had done. It didn't matter. I would avenge them, and I'd feel guilty later.

Jack Slash stumbled out of the bus. He looked a little shaken.

He opened his mouth to speak. I'd heard about his legendary silver tongue; he was reputed to be able to talk his way out of anything.

I shot him in the head.

As his body fell, I saw Crawler explode out of the side of the semi. I didn't have time to deal with him yet, but I was flying high enough that he couldn't get to me.

I heard a scream, and the glass from the bus windows rose and slammed into me. I felt it, but it was barely enough to scratch me. The other parahuman in the bus had to be Shatterbird. I pointed and focused, and a pinpoint beam lashed out from my finger. It blasted through the thin metal of the bus roof, through Shatterbird's body, and through the floor of the bus and into the ground.

I didn't sense Bonesaw anywhere. My range had expanded to five hundred miles, but I'd never met her before and there were a lot of parahumans in the world. If she'd already made it to Boston there wouldn't be a lot I could do about it.

Six down and Bonesaw made seven. Crawler made eight. Was there a ninth member, or were they recruiting because they were short one? I'd have to ask Dragon... or maybe...

"Hey Crawler," I shouted.

He was crouched over Jack Slashes body looking confused. He looked up at me and his gaze sharpened.

"You ready to fight?"

"You should run little girl," he growled, his voice a low rumble. "I'm going to chew the eyes right out of your head. I'll lick the skin off of you and crack your bones."

"Funny," I said. "That's what I was going to say to you... except for the licking part."

He grinned, and a moment later I launched myself down at him. He was only going to get stronger the longer we fought, but I had a plan to get rid of him. In the meantime I wanted to enjoy myself.

I launched myself at him at full speed and he leaped upward to meet me. My fist plunged into the center of his head. His skull shattered under my fist, which sank up to my armpit inside.

I blasted the inside of his body with my strongest Ki blast. He shuddered as the blast exploded out of his tail, but he was already healing. I felt pain as he grabbed onto me and bit down with all of his might. It wasn't anything compared to the Ash Beast. I blasted again, but he was already adapting.

Pulling back from him, I clawed and punched at him. He clawed and punched back, and I could feel him getting stronger. It wasn't like fighting the Siberian; he wasn't immune to what I was doing to him. However, it was getting less and less effective, and his bites were getting stronger and stronger.

He seemed almost giddy with excitement, a feeling that I could understand. I felt it every time I had a power boost. It was euphoric, a feeling like nothing could ever beat me. Even now as his claws were digging more and more strongly I felt it. There was a thrill of battle.

Behind him I caught a glimpse of movement. People were crawling through the glassless windows of the bus. Many of them were bloodied and they all looked hurt.

I had done that.

I felt a moment of shame, and then I realized that while I was playing it was possible that people were dying. I needed to finish this.

Crawler grabbed me and started biting me. It hurt more than anything he'd done so far, and his breath was horrendous.

I flew upward, and he clung onto me. I kept flying and soon we were above the clouds.

"Won't get rid of me girl," he mumbled around my arm.

I blasted his insides and kept blasting. He laughed joyously, and when he did I pulled my arm from his mouth. I was still stronger than him, and we were getting higher and higher.

The sky was growing dark and it was getting harder to breathe. I pulled away from Crawler and for a moment he was in free fall.

Before he could sprout wings or something equally ridiculous, I dodged down and grabbed him by the tail. I started spinning even as he started trying to curl around to get at me. Faster and faster I spun until finally I let go of him.

He went flying straight up. It was possible that he might go into space the way I wanted, but it was equally possible that I hadn't gotten him to escape velocity. Having him fall back to earth to menace other people wasn't acceptable, not at all.

"Ka..." I began. My voice was barely a whisper. At this height the atmosphere was thin enough that it was hard to hear

"Me..."

"Ha..."

"Me..."

"HAAAAA!"

Power exploded from me, slamming into Crawler and pushing him further into space. I could see his wide eyed look at me as he spun further and further upward.

I'd heard that powers didn't work in space. I wasn't sure whether that was true or not. If it was true then Crawler was about to die. If it wasn't, then he'd spent the a long time on his way to the sun. It was possible that he might even survive being plunged into the sun, but he'd never escape. It was the closest thing to literal hell that I could give him, and it was appropriate for all the things he'd done.

I'd used up all my air, and I suddenly felt like I was suffocating. I plunged downward as quickly as I could I doubted that this was something that I could heal from.

It took several uncomfortable moments to reach a level where I could get a good deep breath of air, and it was almost half a minute before I reached the bus.

I saw a mechanical suit approaching. The Ki signature of the person inside was oddly stunted, as though they weren't completely there. I recognized it as one of Dragon's suits.

She was staring at Jack Slash's corpse. There wasn't anything left of his head, but his clothes were recognizable.

"I've killed six of the Nine, and I just threw Crawler into the sun," I said. "I haven't found Bonesaw, and if there's a ninth member I haven't found him yet."

"Alexandria reports that she found Bonesaw in Boston and killed her," Dragon replied, and I felt a sudden sense of relief. "Their last member was killed a week ago, which was why they were looking to recruit."

So it was over.

"You killed all of them... even the Siberian?" Dragon asked. She sounded shocked, even though I couldn't really read her body language inside that suit.

"She was a projection. I killed her master."

She was silent for a long moment. She looked behind me. "Those people are going to need some help."

"Can you send transport?" I asked. "I could try flying them to the hospital, but I'm afraid I'd injure some of them worse."

She nodded. She looked off into space and a moment later said, "Transport will be here in five minutes. Do what you can to help these people, and then you'll be needed to help with the Rager Plague."

I nodded. "I'll do what I can to help."

"It's a pity," she said.

"What?"

"As a Protectorate employee you aren't eligible for the bounties on their heads. You'd have made more than sixty million dollars."

I shrugged. "Money isn't everything."

I heard a woman screaming in horror from the bus. I turned and moved, tearing through the bus as though it was made of tissue paper.

There was a little girl lying with her neck at an awkward angle. Her mother had crawled over a seat and was screaming in grief.

I could feel that her Ki was fading even as I watched. She couldn't have been more than four years old.

Guilt hit me suddenly, like a pile of bricks. I was responsible for this. I'd killed this girl the moment that I'd lashed out without considering just how powerful my blast had become.

"Is there anything you can do?" I asked, turning to Dragon.

She shook her head. "I don't have the proper equipment in this suit. Even if I did, I'm not sure anyone could help her short of Panacea."

I hated feeling like this, helpless. It wasn't like a fight. There you always had a little control, even if it was just deciding to run away. Here, though...

If only she had more Ki. The amount of life force that a girl that age had was infinitesimal compared to mine. If only I could lend her some of mine.

I blinked.

Who said I couldn't?

I shouldered the woman aside. Panacea always asked for permission, but I didn't care. What I was about to try couldn't hurt the girl any worse than she already was, and if it helped...

I carefully placed my hand on the little girl's arm and I closed my eyes. I focused my Ki; the last thing I wanted to do was to cause the little girl to explode into gibbets of blood and gore because I'd pushed my Ki into her too strongly.

Instead I focused on pushing it in slowly. Instead of a beam of light, I was creating a slow and steady drip of warmth. It was almost infinitesimal the amount of power I was using; I doubt it would have powered a light bulb.

When I heard the little girl coughing and calling out for her mother, I looked up.

It had taken a lot longer than I thought. Paramedics were everywhere, and two of Dragon's drop ships were there to take the people to the hospital. It had to have been at least ten minutes, but I hadn't even been aware of the passing of time.

"I wasn't aware that healing was one of your powers," Dragon said.

"Neither was I," I said.

Her expressionless face nodded. "I hear that the container foam is ready for deployment back in Brockton Bay."

I sighed. "I guess I know what I'll be doing for the next few days."


	46. Interlude: Pieces

The door shuddered and Stacy grabbed her little sister and held her tight. The bathroom was tiny, all her parents had been able to afford with part time work, even in a place where the rents were as cheap as Brockton Bay.

Her sister screamed and grabbed onto her.

Their father was dead, and the thing that had been their mother was trying to break through the door to get to them. Their mother had been a small woman, but interior doors were crap; Stacy suspected that even at thirteen years old she'd be able to break through it with enough motivation.

All her mother had was motivation. Even worse, while Stacy thought she might have a chance to fight back, she knew that one bite and they'd both be turning on her little sister.

The small window in the upper corner wasn't large enough for either of them to escape. Even if it was, the streets weren't any safer, not with the Ragers running wild in the street. Stacy had seen the little old lady who lived across the street tearing the mailman's throat out with her teeth.

"Open the door, sweetie," her mother called out. "Everything will be all right."

"Mommy?" her sister asked, blinking.

"Don't believe her," Stacy whispered. "That's not our mommy. That's a monster."

Her mother heard her, even through the door.

"Little pig, little pig, let me in,'" she said. A moment later her fist exploded through the door. A moment later her mother's blood drenched eye appeared in the hole.

Stacy tightened her grip on her sister, who screamed.

"Should have let me eat you," her mother cackled. "Because now I have to beat you first. I should have been beating you all along."

Pushing her sister away, Stacy stood up. She grabbed the shower pole and ripped the showed curtain down. She pulled the rod down and held it out before her like a spear.

"You think that's going to stop me little girl?" her mother asked. She grinned through the hole. "I'm going to break your arms and legs and then I'm going to make you watch what I do to this little bitch. I should have gotten rid of her before she was born."

Stacy tensed as her mother hit the door again. There was a cracking noise as it split down the center.

Her sister was screaming now, but there wasn't anyone to hear. Stacy jammed the end of the rod into her mother's stomach, but her mother batted it aside and lunged toward her.

A thunderous crash from the other room came, like an explosion, and a girl appeared behind her mother. There was an explosion of foam, and where her mother had been was a pillar of foam. They could hear her mother screaming from within.

"She'll be fine in an hour," the girl said. She was heavily muscled for a girl, and she was wearing an old timey helmet and some sort of martial arts outfit. The girl touched her ear.

"There will be some agents in here in a moment to take care of you," she said. "It's not safe to stay here, so we'll be evacuating you to the safe zone."

"Who are you?" Stacy asked.

"I'm the newest Ward," the girl said. "I am Sparta."

A moment later the girl was gone, and agents were rushing in. They bundled Stacy and her sister up even as one of them was quickly taking pictures of her father's battered body.

Her mother was going to be back to normal in an hour? Would she remember what she had done, the things she had said? How were they ever going to go back to being a family, especially now that Dad was gone?

Mom had killed Dad, and that wasn't the kind of thing that ever went away.

As they placed a blanket around her shoulders and led her into a waiting van, Stacy shuddered. Nothing was ever going to be the same again.

* * *

"This is a clusterfuck," Johnson said. His visor was open and he was smoking a cigarette. They'd had to go back to face masks delivered by Dragon, even after what had happened with Shatterbird. A lot of guys had refused to wear them at first; seeing some of those guys with their faces chewed off had been enough to convince everyone else.

"We kill one and two more get turned," Smith agreed. He wasn't smoking. Instead he was sitting on a stoop staring at his hands. "And that last one with the kids..."

A family of five, with barely enough left to identify which body went with which kid. It had been brutal and senseless, and Johnson almost wished someone would resurrect Bonesaw just so he could kill her again. She looked like a kid, but she was a demon, just like the rest of them.

"Yeah. It's shitty that the rest of the world is celebrating while we're stuck doing this..."

There were certain events that you always remembered. People asked the oldsters where they had been when Kennedy was shot, or when the Challenger exploded.

Where were you when the Slaughterhouse was killed?

He'd been stabbing a ten year old to death before she could tear his throat out. He hadn't found out about it until later, and he'd been too bone-tired and in shock to even feel happy about it.

Smith looked up.

"There she is," he said.

Sparta had killed the Nine, and now she was everywhere. People were saying that she hadn't slept in three days. She'd been everywhere.

It had been easy to lure crowds of the Ragers into central squares at first, where they could be sprayed down by Dragon's flying toasters and whoever else was available. But once it had turned into a house to house fight, things had turned ugly.

Those Ragers who had stayed hidden were the smartest, most vicious of the lot. They were the ones who would set ambushes and traps. The funny thing was that they were more than willing to work together.

Johnson had seen former ABB working side by side with men wearing Nazi tattoos. There weren't that many of those left in the Bay, not since the Monkey had attacked, but they were here and there. While they preferred to use their hands and their teeth, they were more than happy to use knives of guns or even bombs.

Sparta and her father had divided the city, and they were clearing block by block, evacuating the residents as they did so that there wouldn't be a pool of people left to reinfect.

"She hardly seems human," Smith said. "Seeing all that. Never even flinches."

The girl was in the air again. She was flitting from building like a hummingbird. The biggest problem was turning out to be finding the manpower to keep up with her. She was exhausting the PRT agents who were helping her, even though they were working in shifts.

"I just hope that she doesn't get bitten," Johnson said. "Wouldn't that be a bitch."

"We'd have a new Endbringer then," Smith said gloomily. "Good thing is that she'd never infect anyone."

"Why?"

"Short of Alexandria, you think she'd leave anybody alive?"

"Well, there's Eidolon and Legend. The Sleeper maybe."

"She's top tier and they say she's getting stronger every day. Who's going to stop her when she gets stronger than Alexandria?"

"Seems like a good kid to me," Johnson said. "Not sleeping, killing the Nine."

"She's fourteen years old. At fourteen I was dumb as dirt and I loved throwing my game controllers at the wall when I screwed up on Mario Cart. I didn't have to deal with periods and cramps and all that female stuff either."

"You're a real class act, Mike," Johnson said. "If she was like that she'd have already showed some signs of being violent. Instead she's just been a hero."

"You don't think all of this isn't going to leave a mark in her head?" Smith asked. "Half the people in town are going to need psychiatrists because of this, and she's right in the middle of it."

"I'm sure the upper levels will take care of it," Johnson said. "They'd be crazy not to."

Mike Smith didn't look convinced. He watched as Johnson threw his cigarette on the ground and stomped it out.

"Well, I guess it's back to work."

They heard the sounds of screams coming from nearby heading in their direction.

"They must have broken the cordon again... crap."

Both of them snapped their visors down and readied their weapons. They were supposed to go non-lethal because in theory these people could be rescued, but both had already had to kill more than one person when things got hairy.

The problem with Sparta was that she couldn't be everywhere, and they were running out of the treated containment foam.

* * *

"Damn that girl," Piggot was saying. "If she doesn't get some sleep she's going to start making mistakes."

"She hasn't made any in three days," Armsmaster said. "It may be that her physiology doesn't require as much sleep as the rest of us do."

Piggot shook her head. "She's barely staying on her feet. I caught her in the cafeteria almost falling face first into her oatmeal... and she only ate five bowls before going back out again."

"Eight hours will be enough for the Rage infected to multiply their numbers again," Armsmaster said. "And we're only finally winning this. We've tried sending PRT agents in without her senses but we've lost men we could ill afford to lose."

"And why haven't we evacuated the city again?" Piggot asked. It wasn't really a question. She knew the answer as well as anyone.

"Because everyone who could afford to evacuate has," Armsmaster said. "And those who are left are safer staying indoors."

"Where they won't add to the Rager numbers. I know the government line," Piggot sighed. "Give me numbers. If the girl sleeps eight hours, what happens to the Rager numbers?"

"Estimates are that their number will multiply by a factor of six," Armsmaster said. "With a projected death toll of three thousand additional people."

"And the girl knows this?"

"It may have been said in a meeting where she could hear it," Armsmaster said.

"And what are the normal effects of going without sleep for three days?" Piggot asked. Armsmaster would know this better than anyone.

"Cognitive impairment, irritability, delusions, paranoia," Armsmaster said. "An inability to remember vital details or pay attention. Illusions..."

"Isn't that the same as hallucinations?" Piggot asked.

"No. Hallucinations involve seeing things that are not there. Illusions involve someone seeing something real and interpreting it as something else."

"So we have someone who is for all practical purposes as powerful as Alexandria," Piggot began. She scowled. It didn't feel the same doing this in an interior room in a telephone company building. There hadn't been many windows, which was why it had been chosen. Their last location had been too vulnerable to Ragers getting in after Shatterbird had destroyed all the windows.

"Current estimates are that she is at one percent of Alexandria's strength," he said.

"If she punches anyone except Alexandria, will they die?" Piggot asked.

"Should she wish it, yes," Armsmaster said. "There are a few parahumans that might not be true of... Lung once he is ramped up...Endbringers would have no trouble with her."

"But as far as the rest of us are concerned, she might as well be Alexandria," Piggot said. She sighed tiredly. Armsmaster had been treating sleep as an option for longer than she'd known him. He didn't think that she knew about the Amphetamine cocktail he'd created to keep him up for long nights.

"And?"

"What would happen if Alexandria began to hallucinate, or was under the delusion that ordinary people were Endbringers?" Piggot asked.

"They would die."

"Alexandria doesn't have energy blasts that leave hundred meter craters either. In some ways, Sparta is more dangerous than Alexandria. She's fourteen years old, which means that she's barely in control of herself at the best of times. She is currently in control of what is the equivalent of a whole lot of small nuclear weapons."

"Those haven't been relevant since Scion..."

"She could destroy the entire city," Piggot said. "Which makes her a bigger threat than a few thousand angry Ragers."

She stood up. "Whatever it takes, make her get some sleep."

"As you've just said, she's effectively as powerful as Alexandria," he said. "How am I going to..."

"Get her father to help. He's taken cat naps, hasn't he?" she asked. "Or trick her into it. I suspect that all you'll have to do is get her to quit moving and into a quiet place, and nature will do your work for you."

He nodded.

"And after this, I'm going to insist on therapy. Her father had been asking for it, but after the things I've been hearing that everyone has been exposed to, I suspect that a lot of people are going to need it."

Armsmaster nodded. "Some of the Wards have had classmates attack them; others have had classmates killed. That's not to mention the things that Aegis and Kid Win may or may not have done while under the influence. There is some evidence that they retain their memories."

"The entire team is going to need some serious help, but until the plague is dealt with, we aren't getting much in the way of reinforcements. They are bringing in Weld, as it is thought his unique physiology is unlikely to be susceptible to the Rager plague."

"One additional Ward will not be enough. We are stretched to the breaking point as it is. If Sparta could work for three more days we'd have this under control."

"You'd have half the city burning when she mistakes Medhall for Leviathan," Piggot said dryly. "Make her get some sleep, even if you have to sedate her food. Be careful of the dosage though. If you dose all of her food it would be enough to kill anyone."

Armsmaster nodded.

"The rest of the world gets to celebrate while we're left picking up the pieces," Piggot said. "That seems to be a running theme for this city."

Shrugging, Armsmaster said "It's a living."

Piggot looked up sharply. Was that a joke, or was he serious? With Armsmaster it was impossible to tell.

"Get it done," she said.

* * *

Panacea wished that she could control her own physiology. She'd been burying herself in work, hoping that she wouldn't have to think about the monstrous thing looming in the back of her own mind.

Dead, dead, all dead.

It wasn't working as well as she'd hoped. Without being able to control her own physiology she couldn't keep herself from having the nightmares. Her family had been the first to have the Rager plague, and at first she hadn't understood what was going on.

Carol had raved and said horrible things, things that every time she closed her eyes she saw over and over. She wasn't rotten to the core, she wasn't evil. She hadn't even known her father was Marquis until her mother had raved about it.

Her mother had said that none of them loved her, that none of them ever had, that they'd only kept her around because she was profitable.

She wasn't evil, she wasn't... even if part of her thought that lusting for her own sister was a sign of something deeply twisted and wrong.

Well, that wasn't going to be a problem anymore.

Had anyone asked how she would feel if her entire family was slaughtered, she'd have assumed that she would cry for days and day. Instead, she hadn't shed a tear. She'd been numb, even if feelings crept in whenever she tried to go to sleep.

Maybe she was evil. She'd fantasized sometimes about doing more with her power, even though she'd always known her mot... Carol would have thought it was wrong.

The worst part was that she could have saved them if she'd reacted in time. By the time she'd realized why her mother was acting the way she was, it was too late. She'd been restrained by the Siberian, who had been completely immune to her power. She'd watched as they tore each other apart.

Their version of the virus had been a little more vicious than the one Bonesaw had distributed to everyone else. It had made them attack each other, which in the general population would have meant it died out quickly.

It would be ridiculously easy to make a virus that wiped everyone else out. Then the world wouldn't be so bright and so loud. People wouldn't be pulling at her all the time even when they knew that she should be grieving.

She'd finally be alone.

There was an attraction to the idea, one that made her a little uncomfortable. If she was evil, why not be evil to the core. Why not be the biggest bad in the history of big bads and just end it all?

After all, it wasn't their powers that had warped and them into the kind of people that would make mother kill daughter and husband kill wife. It was their humanity, or lack thereof.

A world without people was a world without fear or hatred or prejudice.

"Hey, we've got some more wounded,"a nurse said.

Panacea nodded wearily. There were always more wounded, because there were always people killing and hurting and assaulting each other. It never ever ended.

The problem wasn't ending it all.

The problem was how good it was starting to sound.


	47. Solution

Waking with a start, I felt a sense of panic.

Had I fallen asleep?

I'd been finding myself dozing off more and more, sometimes at times that were mission critical, but I knew I had to stay awake. After all, people were dying every moment that I wasn't out saving them. It was a grave responsibility, especially because I'd realized that it was all my fault.

The Slaughterhouse had undoubtedly been attracted to the Bay by stories of my Monkey form; they'd have salivated at a chance at that kind of destruction, even if it was only once a month. They couldn't have known that I was more than six thousand times as strong as I had been then. If they had, maybe they'd have gone somewhere else.

They wouldn't have started this... killing people they never even had the pleasure of seeing suffering.

I'd seen classmates slaughtered in their homes. None of them had been people I'd particularly cared about, but the shock of recognition had been horrible. Seeing their little sisters screaming and traumatized, not just once, but a hundred times was starting to wear at me.

I had been starting to see monsters in the shadows, and I still didn't know if they were real or someone trying to attack me mentally. If there was a master somewhere I had to stop them before they took over.

Dragon had assured me that the Nine were done. Apparently Mannequin had been killed almost accidentally when I'd destroyed the Siberian's master. I hadn't even noticed his life force winking out.

Part of me was still suspicious that there had been a last member unaccounted for. Maybe that was the master who was making me see shadows, the one I needed to kill. I'd found myself watching the people I was saving. Any one of them could have been the master posing as a victim as a way to get close to me.

Now, though I was confused. Where was I and had I been attacked?

Armsmaster had forced me to look at projections of the estimated spread of the infection; sitting and staring at it, I'd felt myself nodding off no matter how hard I tried not to.

Now I was staring up at a ceiling and I didn't know where I was.

I could feel them all around me; familiar people from the PRT and the Protectorate. I could also feel the infection out in the city. It had doubled in size. How long had they let me sleep?

"You've been asleep for seven hours," Armsmaster said.

"What?" I asked. "Why did you let me sleep? People are dying."

"I was overruled," he said simply. "I personally have a chemical cocktail I use when sleep becomes too pressing, but giving amphetamines to a fourteen year old was considered unwise."

"Not at Winslow," I muttered. "You shouldn't have done it. I can feel it; the infection is twice as bad as it was when I went to sleep."

"More help is arriving," Armsmaster said. "The Protectorate looked for volunteers among the heroes least likely to be affected by the virus, and a dozen of them are coming."

"Oh?" I asked.

I could feel parahumans I didn't know all around the city, but there had been parahumans popping up all over the map since the plague started. Powers generally started when someone had a very bad day, and a lot of people had been having bad days recently.

Many of them had ended up joining the ranks of the Ragers; when I foamed them, I took care to point them out to the PRT agents. While normally it would be considered bad form to out someone, it was dangerous to the agents to have powered people who might not be friendly coming out of the foam.

"Tinkers in powered armor, changers with forms that can't be bitten, Case 53s with biologies unique enough that thinkers don't think the virus can take hold," he said. "There were others who wanted to volunteer, but were turned away. Flyers aren't terribly useful in a house to house search for example."

I nodded.

Some of my team from Alexandria's camp had been helping out. I'd seen them in passing; they'd been looking almost as haggard as I was. Viridian had been repelling groups of Ragers, helping PRT agents to hold the line. Peregrine had been flying over the city doing scouting.

Liliander had been creating areas of impassible plant growth all over the city, so tangled that no one could pass through even with a vehicle. That had helped to funnel the Ragers into areas so that the PRT could better contain them.

Swerve had joined the front lines, stopping Rager parahumans who attacked PRT agents. She'd been forced to wear a PRT uniform indistinguishable from the rest. After all, despite all of her power, all if would take was a drop of saliva in her mouth of eye, and she'd turn against everyone else.

I hadn't seen Synapse. Maybe they'd sent him home.

"We need an army," I muttered. "Not just twelve more people."

If this had been a fire they wouldn't have left us undermanned like this. Yet this was very much like a fire in the way it spread.

"We'll make the best of what we've got," Armsmaster said. "I only recently returned from the front lines; I was going to wake you if you didn't wake on your own. You are needed too badly to allow you excess sleep."

"I'm taking a couple of days off when this is all over," I said. "So I can sleep."

He nodded. "I doubt the schools will be open for a while afterwards anyway; enough teachers and students have been killed or fled the city that getting things back to normal will take some time."

"Things won't ever be back to normal," I said gloomily.

He was silent for a moment, staring at me.

"Sparta... Taylor," he said. "One of the first things I learned when I became a hero was that you can't save everyone. Even Alexandria was unable to save Hero, and she's the strongest woman in the world."

"Right now," I said absently.

"You can't expect your current rate of power acquisition to continue," Armsmaster said. "Because it requires fighting stronger and stronger opponents, and there are fewer and fewer of those as you grow stronger."

"I'll jump back into Ash Beast if I have to," I said. "Again and again until I kill him. I might be strong enough to reach him now without dying."

"There are decades before the end of the world," Armsmaster said. "As long as the current situation doesn't spiral out of control. There is no reason to be in such a rush."

I couldn't explain my sense of urgency to him. I had a feeling that I needed to get strong fast. Maybe it was just that I hated how helpless this whole Rager thing made me feel.

On an individual basis no Rager could come close to matching me, not even the parahumans. If there hadn't been a cure I could have simply started blasting away, hitting them through roofs and walls like the ultimate assassin's bullet.

This could have been over two days ago. But because I had to keep them alive, it meant that I had to take them out one by one. I could have simply exploded through walls and roofs myself, but there were always people left behind, people that I didn't know how to help.

That meant that I couldn't move any faster than the PRT, even though they typically had ten teams ready to move in alternating groups. While they were helping the victims in the last household I was already moving on to the next. It still wasn't enough.

I'd seen Dad once in the past three days and he hadn't looked good either.

"I just feel it," I admitted. "People are going to keep feeling threatened by me, and they are going to keep coming, hurting people I care about until I can make them understand."

"Understand?" Armsmaster asked.

"Understand that I'm the scariest thing on the planet," I said. I looked him in the eye. "And I will be. The question is how many people are hurt before I can protect everybody."

With that I stood up.

"The longer I wait the more people are going to die. Don't let me sleep again, even if you have to dose me with whatever crap you're giving yourself. It's the only way we're going to beat this."

"I understand," Armsmaster said.

Even though he didn't actually agree to do what I'd said I knew that he did. I knew enough about him to know that he hated the fact that he had to sleep. He envied Miss Militia for being a noctis cape.

I just wanted this all to be over.

* * *

"They just started dropping," PRT agent Johnson said to me. "One after the other."

This was the fourth household where we'd found Ragers unconscious. I could feel that they were in the process of changing back, much like the ones who were in the treated containment foam.

"What does this look like to you?" I asked. I pointed to the woman's neck.

"It looks like a nasty insect sting," Agent Smith said, leaning close. He had his hand on his taser; apparently he'd seen the same horror movies that I had.

Johnson tapped his visor.

"We're getting reports of the same thing from all over the city," he said. "There was a big crowd of Ragers over by Lord street, and a swarm of wasps attacked them. The Ragers dropped in their tracks."

"Do you think maybe we should get some samples?" I asked uneasily. This sounded suspiciously like the work of a bio-tinker... maybe Blasto or someone we hadn't heard about. There were enough traumatized people in Brockton Bay right now that it was possible that at least one of them had triggered as a bio-tinker.

Considering that the whole plague was one, I wasn't surprised they hadn't spoken up. Especially since it was likely that these wasps were self replicating; that would put a kill order on their head if anyone found out about it.

"We can't do anything about it right now," I said. "We keep doing what we've been doing and hope that this isn't the start of something even worse."

With my luck this was the second part of Bonesaw's plan... lure us into a false sense of security while she had something even worse lurking in the wings. It sounded like exactly the kind of thing the Nine would try. They'd get their revenge from the grave.

Johnson scowled. "Hope this crap is over with by the weekend."

"Got a game coming up?" Smith asked.

"Just tired," Johnson said. "It's too much."

"Get back to work," I said. A moment later I left them to meet with team two.

* * *

"It's been two days since the last reported Rager case," Piggot said to the capes in the room. "It seems likely that the plague can be considered put to bed."

There was an audible sigh of relief. We'd been pushed to the breaking point, and while the others had been getting more sleep than I had, it obviously wasn't much.

"It's not all good news," Piggot said.

The room quieted down.

"The reason that the plague died off so quickly was because of a new species of wasp we have taken to calling Tranquility Wasps. They were designed to inject a faster acting version of the cure along with a powerful sedative."

"How is it that they only attacked the Ragers?" Velocity asked.

"The Ragers had changes in body chemistry that led to them having a distinctive chemical signature. The Tranquility were designed to be attracted to that and only that."

"So... win for us?" Clockblocker asked.

"They were designed to infect other wasps in the region, which is why there were so many of them," Piggot said, scowling. "They'd infect one wasp from a different nest, and that wasp would return to their nest and infect all of the others. They were programmed to do it through mechanisms that Panacea tells us are sophisticated."

"Who could have done this?" Battery asked.

"A new trigger?" I spoke up. "There's obviously been plenty of them in the city."

"You can tell who's a parahuman and who isn't," Armsmaster said. "How many new triggers can you sense in town?"

"Thirty two," I said grimly. "And only fourteen have been captured or identified by the PRT."

"Self-replicating creations are hideously dangerous," Piggot said. "Whoever created this is likely to get a kill order."

"For saving the city?" Velocity asked incredulously.

"So far it looks like they have returned to being normal wasps. They still have the attraction to Ragers, but without any Ragers to attack they've returned to generic wasp behaviors."

"That's good then?"

"They still sting people." Piggot said. "And while the cure is harmless to ordinary people, the sedative is not. There have already been four cases of people trying to get rid of nests being attacked by multiple wasps; one of them died."

I nodded. It was hard to get sedative doses correct; if one wasp delivered enough sedative to put someone to sleep, through whatever tinker magic allowed them to be designed, then a swarm of them would deliver enough to kill.

"There's going to be a concerted effort to eradicate the wasp population in the city," Piggot said. "The CDC will be leading the effort."

They'd sent a few people to examine the plague, but for the most part they'd been just as afraid to put boots on the ground as the rest of the country. Brockton Bay had been left to its own, and it was something that the citizens weren't likely to forget.

I certainly wasn't going to.

Brockton Bay was treated differently from other cities. At first I'd thought it was just because we were poor, but I couldn't imagine that Chicago would be treated this way.

"FEMA is finally getting off their asses and sending people in. I'm not sure why they'd been treating us like a Simurgh containment zone, but as far as I'm concerned that's over."

Piggot leaned forward. "I've talked to the leaders of the various agencies, and I've told them that I'll go to the press if they don't start helping people."

At least half the population had evacuated. The numbers were still coming in, but the thinkers suspected that eighteen thousand people were dead. One person in twenty dead, and everyone in their families traumatized.

The elephant in the room was that this could very well be the death knell for the entire city. I had a feeling that a lot of people weren't going to bother coming back; businesses and lives had been destroyed.

Except for the people who'd been smart enough to leave at the very beginning, there wasn't anyone in the city who wasn't going to have scars from this.

"We need to find the biotinker," Piggot said. "So far they seem to have had good intentions; it may be that we can keep them from getting a bullet to the head if we make it clear to them that no further self replicating creations will be allowed. Otherwise it's out of our hands."

Armsmaster spoke up.

"I've been told that people aren't machines," he said. "I'm not sure if I understand that, really, but evidence seems to indicate that people work more efficiently when they are rested and not overwhelmed by trauma."

Piggot stared at him, then nodded.

"We'll go on skeleton shifts for the weekend, give everyone a chance to decompress."

I nodded and stood up. Dad wasn't here; he was out with the PRT agents keeping people in line while the rest of us were strategizing. I was likely going to be sidelined for a while because of Youth Guard rules.

I headed for the roof of the hotel. Even if I wasn't officially on duty that didn't mean I couldn't go see my father, right?

As I opened the door, I recognized Panacea's signature. I'd known she was here, of course, but I hadn't realized she was smoking.

"Um... hey," I said.

She was staring out over the city.

"You ever feel like you aren't doing enough with your powers?" she asked.

"No," I said.

She looked up.

"I feel like I'm not doing enough in general."

"I heard you kept a girl alive... somehow with your abilities," Panacea said. "It doesn't seem like something that fits with your other powers."

"I sense life energy," I said. "My Ki blasts are made of life energy. I just gave her life energy faster than it was pouring out of her."

"That simple, huh?" she asked.

"It didn't really heal her," I said. "Some maybe. Not really... I don't know."

"But you found a new way to use your power," she said. "Wasn't that exciting?"

"I guess," I said. "I was too busy trying to keep her alive to be excited, and I haven't had time to think about it since then."

She looked down at her hands. "Are you ever afraid of what your powers can do?"

I stared at her for a moment and then shook my head. "Powers are like a gun. They do what you tell them to, unless you are an idiot. If you don't want to shoot someone, don't point the gun at them."

She looked up at me, and I flushed.

"Well, unless you are going to turn into a giant monkey," I said. "Then you're like a monkey with a gun."

"I'm joining the Wards," she said.

"What? Why?" I asked.

"Where else will I go?" she asked. "I was adopted, and I was never really close to the Dallon or Pelham extended family. I don't have anyone else to take care of me."

"It's better than foster care," I said. "And at least you're getting paid. I hear that everyone is getting big bonuses because the Nine were killed."

"Yeah... no. You're the one getting the bonuses. They just told you it was everybody."

"Why would they lie?" I asked.

"The same reason they lie about everything else," she said. "Because it's convenient or because they feel threatened."

"Oh?"

"They hate those wasps because they don't understand them," she said. "The perfect solution to a problem that was never going to end."


	48. Relations

"I think it would be good for public relations," Dad said.

"The Protectorate isn't in the business of public projects," Piggot said. "And I'm not certain that it would set a good precedent. Do it once, and people start to expect you to do it."

"The city is dying," he said. "It has been for years, but this Rager thing is going to finish it off. Unless we take action now, nobody is even going to bother coming back."

Piggot stared at him, then scowled. "What would you have us do?"

"Move the ships out of the ships graveyard," Dad said. "Taylor can do that by herself without any problems. The girl from Alexandria's camp can place trees all over the city... nice ones not the brush that's clogging up the streets now."

"That won't undo the damage that's been done, even if both your daughter and Liliander weren't both minors. We've circumvented the work day requirements for them because they are minors, but they are both due time off."

"I could take care of the ship's graveyard in thirty minutes," I said. "I just need a place where I can sink them without getting into any trouble."

"The actual damage to the city is minimal,' Dad said. "There were some fires, but it rained and they didn't get out of control. The big problem is one of perception."

"You'll have to come up with something better than a few trees and sinking some ships," Piggot said. "I'm willing to consider it if you can come up with a plan that doesn't take too much manpower."

"People need to see that we're on their side," I said.

"The problem is that most Capes don't have powers that are actually useful," Piggot said. "They mostly seem designed for combat."

"Except for Panacea," I said.

I'd been a little creeped out by her the other night, actually. She hadn't seemed like herself, not at all. Losing your entire family might do that to you, of course. I hadn't done well at all after Mom died, but I hadn't reacted like she was.

She wasn't seeming to react with emotion at all. She seemed almost dead behind her eyes.

"I could help with knocking buildings down, and carrying off debris," I said.

"And what happens to the jobs of the men who would have done that instead?" Piggot asked. She glanced at my dad. "Most of them would probably be Dockworkers the way things are going."

Dad glanced at me and nodded. She had a good point.

We should focus on things that ordinary people couldn't do easily; big things that would be a symbol that the city was on its way back. Otherwise we'd be looking at a ghost town in a couple of years.

Piggot was right about one thing. My powers didn't seemed to be designed for much other than fighting. I was built to get stronger and stronger, but I couldn't make a flower grow or create food to feed the homeless.

Outside of combat, Panacea was the one with the power that would be the most useful. She could heal, but they already had her working at full capacity.

Liliander might be able to make an entire city green, assuming that the city codes allowed it. Dad had told me that sometimes city inspectors could cause all kinds of difficulties with any project they didn't like or understand.

Sometimes they even expected bribes for not holding jobs up. There was a lot of extortion in the city government, often by people who were either in the pocket of, or sympathetic to the gangs. The Empire was gone, but there were probably a lot of sympathizers still in the government who would do anything in their power to hold up any projects that I was involved in.

The Protectorate had the power to cut through all that red tape, which was why we needed Piggot on our side.

"There has to be something we can do," I said.

"The problem with Capes is that they think they have more power than they do," Piggot said. "Simple solutions for problems that are ultimately very complicated. Cleaning up the Ship's graveyard would be a laudable goal, but would it be enough by itself to bring back the trade that has been lost?"

I looked at Dad, who sighed.

"Businesses have moved on; shipping companies such that they are have contracts with other cities. There has to be warehouses set up to receive supplies, a better train system to ship the materials out, people to man the warehouses and the trucks and the trains. It's amazingly complex, and all it takes is for one step in that chain to fail for the whole thing to fall apart."

"Does that mean we don't do anything?" Dad asked. "I've been trying to fight city hall on this for years and nobody is willing to put up any money."

"Because they don't have it," Piggot said. "Projects like that take a lot of money... which either comes from taxes or bonds. The less money people make, the less money comes through in taxes. The less taxes, the more infrastructure is allowed to fall apart. The less infrastructure the less businesses are willing to invest. It's a death spiral."

"What about the bounty money from the Slaughterhouse Nine?" I asked. "I know I can't get any of it because I work for the government, but is there any way that it could be diverted to help the city?"

Piggot frowned. "It depends. If it's framed as a way of helping Slaughterhouse victims it might be possible. I'd have to talk to legal and it would have to have both of your signatures, but it's possible."

"I know that sixty five million is a drop in the bucket, but it might go a long way to helping the city back on its feet," I said. "And maybe if we publicize what we're trying to do, other people might be willing to donate."

"This place isn't the usual kind of place where people donate to. The biggest thing people are going to need isn't blankets or baby formula... it's going to be caskets. They're going to be pulling bodies out of places for months, and once summer hits it'll be terrible."

"I'm pretty sure I can use my power to engrave names on headstones," I said. "It'd be good practice for precision applications for my powers."

"Just in case you need to do brain surgery with them," Piggot said dryly.

I shrugged. "You never know. Maybe an enemy tinker has built a bomb, maybe I need to cut the cancer out of someone. It's never a bad idea to find new applications for your power."

She stared at me for a moment, then nodded. "I'm just surprised. Most of your contemporaries are mostly interested in finding combat applications for their powers."

"Oh, I'm interested in that too," I said. "But it occurs to me that my power works best when I'm facing people who are stronger than me. The stronger I get the rarer that's going to be. Eventually it's just going to be me and the Endbringers. How will I get stronger then?"

"By fighting Endbringers?"

"By getting more creative," I said. "I can't afford to just be a hammer. I need to be a Swiss army knife, and the only way that's going to happen if I get creative."

"Maybe you aren't the idiot I thought you were when you jumped face first into a fire," she said.

"I still plan to kill him," I said. "I'm just going to be more careful next time. I'm already at least ten times as tough as I was then. Give me another two or four times and I'll be ready to go for it again."

She stared at me. "And it hurt... like for regular people."

""I thought it did," I said. "I think I was probably awake longer than an ordinary person would have been."

"And you want to do it again."

"I want to kill an Endbringer," I said. "And put their head on my mantle. I want to send the others a message that humanity isn't just waiting to roll over and die."

Piggot had a strange look on her face. "That's a laudable goal. Like I said, I'll look into it. However, according to the rules you shouldn't even be here. Time off is mandatory."

"The city is shut down. Even school isn't going to be back for a while."

"You can fly at multitudes of the speed of sound," Piggot said, staring at me. "You can literally go anywhere you want, at least within the United States without any problems."

I felt stupid. I wasn't used to thinking any further than Boston; the eighty miles between here and there had always seemed like a long distance.

"But where would we go?"

"We could always learn to surf," Dad said.

"It's not like we have a lot of money," I said. "We haven't been working here for very long, and we're still paying off medical bills from when the ABB beat me."

Panacea didn't cost anything, but the time I'd been in the Emergency room and the hospital stay afterwards had been pricey.

"Money won't be an issue for you soon," Piggot said smoothly.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"While it's true that you were not allowed access to any of the money from the bounties on the Slaughterhouse Nine, you are allowed ten percent of the revenues on merchandise sold in your likeness. For most Wards it's not a lot... T-shirts, a few plush dolls, mostly bought in the store downstairs. After all, there are a lot of heroes in the Protectorate, and most of them aren't very famous outside of their hometowns."

"But I'm different," I said.

"You killed the Slaughterhouse Nine," Piggot said. "There's a lot of interest in you and your brand. We already have two hundred thousand units ordered for your action figure."

I stared at her. "And how much do they cost?"

"Nineteen ninety nine each," she said. "The money is flowing in. Technically your father will be in control of the money because you are a minor. It's not as regulated for Wards as their actual salaries, because as I said, most of the time it doesn't amount to much. Shadow Stalker makes about fifty dollars a week for example, and she's fairly comparable to the others... except Vista, who's making five times that. She doesn't talk about it much to the others because it irritates them."

"So I've got four hundred thousand dollars coming?" I asked.

She lifted her hand. "You can't expect that kind of money to keep coming in. Interest in you is blazing hot right now, and the Protectorate is taking advantage of that while they can. There will also be a line of T-shirts, coffee mugs and other merch. You might be able to make twice that before the interest dies off."

"Nobody talked to me about this," I said. I looked at Dad. "Did they talk to you about this?"

"It was in the contract we signed," he said apologetically. "We signed over the rights to use our image for merchandising purposes. I didn't think it would amount to much."

"Just tell me they aren't going to put my face on girl's panties," I said slowly.

Piggot sighed and shook her head. "One of the marketers became a little overzealous with that one. He was demoted and reprimanded after people started to complain that it was inappropriate to put a middle aged man's face on the panties of pre-teen girls. I'm not sure why anyone would have bought them in the first place."

I flushed. I'd wanted them when I was a girl; the meaning of it hadn't occurred to me until later. Looking at Dad, I could see that he looked a little flushed too.

"Ultimately the point is that you can afford to take a little time off. You should probably wait to spend the money until you have it, and the Protectorate will be happy to provide you with someone who can help you manage your money so that it will grow instead of being wasted by the time you are eighteen."

Now I was flushing even more, but for an entirely different reason.

"We aren't poor because we're idiots," I said hotly. "We're poor because of mom's medical bills, and mine, and the way the Dockworkers have been hemorrhaging money."

Piggot shook her head. "Eighty percent of the people in Brockton Bay are poor. It's just the way things are here. I simply meant that it's easy for money to go to people's heads, especially young people."

I stared at her sullenly and didn't say anything.

"Frankly, I sometimes think that money management should be part of Wards training. I've seen a lot of cases where former Wards gained access to the money in their accounts, and they've blown it all in a year or two. You are fourteen years old and you've never had money. How can anyone expect you to know what to do with it?"

"I've got my Dad," I said. "And he's not an idiot about money. Besides, I really don't care about money. What would I buy?"

"Clothes?" she asked.

"I look like a boy," I said flatly, purposefully not looking down at my lack of attributes. "And the more muscular I get it's only going to get worse. I don't care what I wear."

"Cars?"

"I can fly, and even if I couldn't, I'm fourteen."

"A house in a nicer area might be nice," Dad said.

"What, you're worried about crime?" I asked incredulously. "I doubt that there's a non-parahuman criminal in the bay who could even threaten you right now, much less me, and the house we live in is where Mom was."

"Well, you've never liked jewelry," Dad said. "And you aren't into electronics."

I shuddered, thinking of Garrett and Leet's obsession with them. I could enjoy a game or two, but my whole life was like a video game. Why live vicariously when you could simply live?

After all, I even leveled up in a manner of speaking.

"So that leaves travel an restaurants," Dad said. "You know, there are foods out there that you've never tried, things so delicious that it'll bring tears to your eyes."

"Really?" I asked. I frowned. "It'd be wrong to leave now, though. The city needs us, all of us. If we left I'd feel like I was abandoning everyone."

"We're issuing mandatory leave to everyone in the Protectorate, starting with the Wards," Piggot said. "And we'd like to ask you a favor."

"What?"

"Take Panacea with you," Piggot said.

"What?" I stared at her. "I barely know her. Dean was her sister's boyfriend. Shouldn't he be the one to take her in?"

"Dean says that you are the only one she's bonded to at all," Piggot said.

"She hasn't bonded with me," I said sharply. "I don't think she's bonded with anyone."

"Her family is dead," Dad said quietly. "And she watched them do it to themselves. That's probably going to make her angry and sad and confused."

Piggot nodded. "The Youth Guard has insisted on counting the time after her families' death when looking at how much time off she is due. While I'm not sure I agree, I do admit that having the only remaining healer in Brockton Bay collapse due to psychological issues probably isn't anything any of us wants."

She continued. "And considering how important she is to your advancement, I'd have thought you wanted to build a close bond."

"What?"

"You get stronger when you are hurt and then you heal. Having someone there to heal you quickly means that you get stronger faster."

"Leet has Bacta tanks," I said.

"Which, while amazing technology that anyone would be happy to have work less effectively and less quickly than Panacea."

Looking at the two adults in the room, I had to wonder why they were pushing this so hard. Was I being unreasonable about not wanting to take a stranger on vacation with me? She had lost her family.

It just felt unfair; I'd seen at least a hundred other teenagers with stories as bad or almost as bad as hers. Even though objectively I knew she was important, I couldn't help but feel that getting special treatment because we were capes was wrong.

"How long of a break are you talking about?" I asked.

"A weekend," Piggot said. "We can't afford to lose anyone for longer than that. The fact that you can be back from anywhere in the United States in under two hours means that you have a little more leeway than some of the others."

"And it's not just us that you're making do this?" I asked.

"Everyone," she said. "Over the ext month, rotated out in pairs. Armsmaster is going last, of course, because he requested it and because he has seniority."

Well, if they were going to get _Armsmaster_ to take a vacation...

"So where were you thinking about going?" I asked Dad.

"I've got a few ideas," he said slowly.


	49. Flight

"I could have flown there on my own," I said irritably, even as I settled into the softest, most luxurious chair I'd ever sat in. Although I'd never admit it to anyone, I was finding myself a little intimidated by my surroundings.

"I couldn't have kept up with you," Dad said. "And carrying Amy for a couple of hours might have gotten uncomfortable."

Panacea had been quiet, but she finally spoke up. "I can tell you that from experience. I loved flying with... with... " She trailed off for a moment, but finally recovered."But even a few minutes were hard on my back and butt. Besides, there's no way to be carried while flying that isn't incredibly awkward."

She had never been particularly bright or cheery, not in all the time that I'd known her. But now that she wasn't keeping herself busy working, it was like there was something dead behind her eyes. I was starting to think that the Protectorate had been right about requiring a vacation; not for me, of course, but for her.

"Is it really all right for us to accept all this?" I asked, speaking about to the private jet we were in. "They wouldn't let me keep the money from the bounties on the Slaughterhouse; why is this any different?"

An anonymous billionaire had donated the use of his plane, presumably as a reward for what I'd done with the Slaughterhouse. Presumably the Protectorate knew who the donor was, and a team of PRT agents had gone over the plane with a fine toothed comb before we'd gotten on to determine if there were any traps.

They'd called it training for real incidents in the future; presumably to explain away whatever costs were incurred. It probably would have been cheaper to have just gotten us seats on a commercial airline.

It was nice to get some kind of acknowledgment that I'd done something exceptional with the Nine. There was supposed to be some kind of ceremony after we got back and the Protectorate had made enough repairs to move back into our respective headquarters. Still, without access to newspapers and no time to watch television during the Rager plague, I'd missed out on most of the media firestorm in the aftermath of my destroying them.

Reporters had asked for interviews, but the publicity guy who would have trained me had been eaten by Ragers, and his replacement hadn't been hired yet.

I had to admit the furnishings were amazingly opulent. The whole place was done up in marble and what I assumed was mahogany. The chairs were plush leather and were incredibly pleasant to sink into. It made me wonder if we could get some for home, maybe as a couch.

Each one probably cost as much as our house, with my luck. It didn't help that they were all white, as was the carpet. There was a bedroom in the back with a marble wall, and there was actually a spa room, although I had no intention of getting into a spa with this crew.

"Wow," Leet said as he settled into his chair. "It was nice of you guys to let us hitch a ride. I wasn't sure we were going to be able to get tickets to HawaiiCon this year."

Apparently they were going to some sort of gaming convention. I wasn't sure if it was pen and paper or video gaming. As I wasn't going I didn't particularly care. However, Garrett had done a lot for me, and it seemed ungrateful not to offer him a seat. Even Leet had done some good for me.

His Bacta tank had saved Dad's life, and that wasn't something I would forget.

Panacea seemed a little uncomfortable around the guys though. I'm not sure they had ever been in the same room.

"Can you believe it?" Leet asked. "Five days of fun, and all we had to do was name drop Sparta to skip the lottery system."

I frowned.

It was unlikely that they'd been able to skip in line just because they knew me, even if they'd somehow gotten the PRT to vouch for them. There had to be more.

"You didn't happen to promise that I'd go, did you?" I asked suspiciously.

"One panel the day after tomorrow," he said. "Just for an hour. They'll let you in the back door. It'll just be a question and answer thing."

I felt my heart sink. While it was true that I owed both of them, the thought of facing crowds of thousands of people like Greg Vedar was enough to make me want to go to my room and sleep for a week.

"You know I'm supposed to vet any interviews through the publicity guys," I said. "I tend to screw things up."

"These won't be reporters," he assured me. "They'll be _fans_. Besides, it's not like we're going to CapeCon. They'll know better than to grab you on the butt."

He'd saved dad's life. I had to remember that. I unclenched my teeth and then I sighed. "Fine. Make sure I know what time and where to be, and I'll see that it's done."

"I'll go as well, " Dad said hurriedly. He glanced at me. "I've got more experience in dealing with the public, and I might be able to help her avoid making the headlines again."

Leet chuckled. "Come at me bro! I'll bet that's the last time you say that at a press conference."

I felt my face flush. "That's not what I said... not exactly."

Panacea smiled at me weakly. It wasn't much of a smile, but it was the first smile I'd seen her make since the death of her family. "Well, you didn't exactly ask to be shot in the face, but that's how everybody took it."

I winced as I saw Leet pull a bottle of cranberry juice from the minibar and pour it into a glass with ice. Everything here was white, and I couldn't imagine how expensive it would be if he spilled it. I resolved to watch until he finished the drink, and if he spilled it I'd try to catch it before it fell. It would be good practice for reaction speed.

"I've been wanting to meet you for a long time," Leet was saying to Panacea.

"Oh?" she asked cautiously. From the look on her face it appeared that she'd already made some conclusions about Leet, none of them good. Part of me wanted to defend him, but I suspected that the conclusions she was reaching weren't far off.

"Those mosquitoes you did were brilliant," Leet said. "Like perfect biotinkering. You probably should have put some kind of shutdown mechanism afterwards, but..."

We were all staring at him in horror.

Amy's face had turned white as a sheet. It was almost as though Leet didn't realize that he'd just accused Panacea of creating something that could get a kill order.

"What?" he asked, staring at us.

Garrett leaned over and whispered in his ear. He shook his head irritably.

"My drones tracked the spread of the wasps back to a nest right by the Dallon's house," he said. "Plus, I examined the work on some of the original wasps, and they didn't show any of the signs of modification that someone like Bonesaw might use. The whole reason I looked into it was because the PRT asked me to check and see if it was another posthumous trap Bonesaw was setting."

"And did you tell them that you thought it was Panacea?" I asked.

He shook his head. "They asked if it was Bonesaw's work. They didn't ask if I knew who'd done it."

Glancing at Panacea, I said, "And can you think of a reason she might not want someone to know that she's able to create Plagues and monsters that fly in the night?"

"Because she'd have to get a dark and edgy costume?" he asked. "I've got some ideas about that, actually."

"Dude, she's fourteen," Garrett said in a low voice, looking embarrassed.

"I just turned sixteen," Panacea said stiffly. "And I can decide what costume I want to wear."

Leet leaned forward, pulling out a pad.

An image flickered on the screen, and Panacea recoiled. Her eyes almost looked like they were bulging out. "That's never going to happen... ever."

"Sixteen," Garrett muttered to Leet. "That's not cool."

"Anyway," Leet said. "I'm glad you're finally _using_ your powers."

"I've been using my powers almost every day since I got them," Panacea said stiffly. "Like, all the time."

"Yeah, but powers don't like being used in boring ways," Leet said.

"Powers can't want anything," Panacea said.

"Everybody thinks that, but they're wrong," Leet said. "Before I met Tay...Sparta here, small things were going wrong with my power. I was making mistakes, things weren't always working out the way that my hands told me they were supposed to. It was like my power was turning against me."

"And that changed?" Panacea asked. For the first time I saw something behind her eyes other than a dead void. She actually seemed a little interested in what he had to say.

"Yeah. I was always pretty careful with my power, but Sparta made me rethink things. I started trying new things, getting out there and fighting, even if it's just through my avatar machines. Ever since then, my power has been more creative than it's ever been. Ideas come to me more easily and everything works right, no matter how many times I do them."

"My power has always worked perfectly," Panacea said stiffly. "I've never had...performance issues."

"But people talked about how depressed you were, even before all that crap with your family and the Nine," Leet said, as though he didn't realize that bringing up the worst trauma Panacea had ever been through wasn't something he should do.

She didn't seem offended though. Instead she had a strange look on her face. "People noticed that?"

"Yeah," Leet said. "Once we gave up the idea of being villains, and we started filming Sparta kicking ass, we thought about being Cape reporters. Maybe starting up a magazine of website. I even did some interviews of people who knew you. I've got some from your sister."

"What?" Panacea asked. Her face suddenly flushed and she leaned forward.

"I can send them to you," he said. "If you want."

"Please," she said.

Leet looked at her for a moment, then took a sip of his cranberry juice. My hand twitched as he sat it back on the table without looking. It didn't fall though.

"I'm envious of you," Leet said.

"Why?" Panacea asked incredulously. "My life is shit. My whole family is dead, I don't have any of my own friends, I'm expected to work for no money, and people make me feel guilty if I don't... and I'm a teenage girl."

"Those pants don't make you look fat," Leet said.

"Dude," Garrett said.

"No... what I envy is your power," Leet said. "Out of all of us, who has the most potential to change the world?"

"'That's Tinkers in general," Amy said. "And I've heard you can build anything."

Leet shook his head. "I can build things, but they take tinkers to maintain. That means that everything I build is basically going to be a one off. Even if I was going to build a machine that turned garbage into food, there wouldn't be any way for me to put one in every African village."

"So?" Amy asked.

"You make things that can replicate," he said. "You could literally change the world into a paradise. Cure world hunger? Create viruses that ate diseases and only diseases? Maybe even find a way to make human minds incapable of evil through a disease of a virus."

"I'd get a kill order for any of those things," she said quietly. "Even though I'd love to be able to make a big change. The government would never allow it."

"So move someplace where they would," he shrugged. "Once the genie's out of the bottle nobody would be able to put it in again."

"Remember Jurassic park," Garrett said reprovingly.

"Yeah, I know. Just because you can make dinosaurs doesn't mean you should," Leet said. "But that was just a movie. In the real world... dinosaurs? How cool would that be? The easiest way to make them would be to start with chickens."

Panacea looked intrigued for a moment, then shook her head. "It would be a bad idea."

"Even if we made some bad ass riding dinosaurs?" Leet asked.

"I'm not going to make you riding dinosaurs," Panacea said. "For one thing I don't do brains, which means that you couldn't control them."

"There's ways around that," Leet said, grinning. "I can think of three right off the top of my head. Nobody takes the healer for granted when she rides in on top of a T-Rex."

"Where would I park it?" Panacea asked. She shook her head. "What would people say if my pet dinosaur ate more people than I healed in a shift?"

"That Panacea is a bad ass dino-rider?" Leet said. "And that anyone who got that close to a T-Rex clearly won the Darwin award."

I raised my hand slowly. "I'd kind of like a riding dinosaur."

Given my powers, I doubted that I'd have any problem training it. I wasn't sure how I'd housebreak one, but we probably had enough money to hire someone to clean up after it.

Assuming they didn't get eaten.

"You can fly," Panacea said, looking at me strangely.

"Well, we could never really afford a dog," I said slowly. :"And I'd walk it and feed it scraps..."

"You want a dinosaur as a pet," she said flatly.

I shrugged. "It'd be kind of cool."

"The neighbors would complain," Dad said quickly. "And if it got out it might not go well. I don't think anyone would be happy if it ate Mrs. Johnson."

I grimaced. "Or maybe everyone would. She's not a very nice person. Are we even sure she's still alive after the Rager thing? We may be the last ones on our block."

"The Smiths are still alive," Dad said quietly. "Although there's going to be at least three empty houses on our block."

"On everyone's block," Leet said, and for once he didn't follow up with a stupid or sexist remark. He seemed genuinely sorry, and it made me think a little better of him.

"It might be a good time to get into real estate," he said a moment later.

The warm feeling evaporated as quickly as it had come.

"That depends on whether people come back," Dad said, ignoring the crassness of the comment. "If they do, the houses will be worth a lot of money. If they don't then you're holding a lot of worthless real estate."

"The city's going to come back," Leet said confidently.

"How can you be so sure?" I asked.

"You're there," he said. "And your Dad. And Uber and me. We aren't going to let our home be wiped out. We're going to find a way to make Brockton Bay the city it once was."

The feeling was back.

"And then we'll make a killing in the real estate market."

And there it went again.

"So what are we doing?" Panacea asked. "I brought my bathing suit, because I assumed we'd be using it, but I've been a little busy and this was kind of last minute."

"The beach, of course," I said. "Swimming with sharks, snorkeling. Visiting the volcano."

"Is that why you brought me?" she asked. "Planning on sacrificing yourself to the volcano god in hopes of getting stronger?"

For a moment I thought she was serious, and then I had to think. Would I get stronger if I threw myself into a volcano? Was lava as hot as the Ash Beast's fire?

Could I do something that stupid just for power, and would it hurt as badly as it had when I was inside the Ash Beast.

"I was joking," Panacea said. She must have seen the look on my face. "I'm not healing you if you jump into the volcano."

"Sparta is beyond all that," Leet said confidently. "Besides, if she was planning on doing that, she'd have asked me to build her a fireproof bikini."

"There's no such thing as fireproof," Panacea said automatically. "Only fire-resistant. Even stone will melt if it gets hot enough... like lava."

"I could make clothes that are fireproof," Leet said confidently. "Although she could probably protect any clothes with her Ki, unless it was hot enough to damage her."

"We're really looking forward to the Luaus," Dad said. " I've heard that they serve poi, Kalua pig, poke, lomi salmon, opihi, haupia... beer for me."

"And how are you going to explain how much you're eating?" Garrett asked. "Unless you plan to go in costume."

"We'll be eating with some retired Hawaiian PRT agents who know what to expect," Dad said. "It'll be a private party for all of us."

"Well, hopefully we get back from HawaiiCon in time," Garrett said. "Con food can end up being pretty funky after a few days."

"There's nothing wrong with warmed over beer and pizza," Leet said. He leaned back in his chair and I lashed out suddenly, grabbing the cranberry juice before it could splash on the white carpet. "What could possibly go wrong?"

"Dude," Garrett sighed, even as the rest of us groaned.


	50. Wolf Pack

As I exploded out of the water I grinned. Swimming with the sharks really was a lot of fun, even if it wasn't really fair to them. They'd tried to bite me, and it had barely been a tickle even when I wasn't consciously augmenting myself with ki.

More importantly, I'd been able to repel them with an application of my Ki. Sharks sensed prey in a number of ways, but one of them was through an organ that allowed them to sense the electrical fields that living things created. It was a lot like Ki in its way.

I'd been able to disrupt that sense, confusing the sharks and forcing them to leave the area. So far as I could tell by tracking them it didn't feel like they'd been hurt at all.

Dad could do it too, once I showed him, although not as well.

"Great uncle Earl used to fight sharks," he said quietly. "Until he met the big one and didn't come back."

It would have been hell growing up in those days; forced by biology to crave getting stronger without the kind of opponents who would make that possible. I'd been thinking about my own experiences and I'd concluded that I got stronger the bigger the gap was between me and my opponent. Fighting someone a lot stronger made me strong faster than fighting someone weaker.

But now I was a long way from finding sharks anything but amusing. I could stay underwater for a long time, but I'd been pushing myself by staying under until my lungs burned more and more.

We were on the billionaires yacht, and the people on board were also PRT agents. I suppose that this was a little bit of a vacation for them too, since they got to go yachting on a work day.

A paranoid part of me wondered if they were purposefully keeping an eye on us during our vacation. It wasn't like we were going out to start a war with the CUI or something. I didn't argue, though, because it was much more convenient being able to use my powers without my costume.

I even thought I looked good in my bikini. Despite my lack of... attributes, my body was toned and tight. I had muscles where women normally didn't, but they didn't look masculine.

Panacea... no Amy now that we weren't in costume was on the board laying in the sun. Unlike my two piece, she was wearing a one piece bathing suit and a large sun hat. She'd slathered on a lot of sunscreen too; I suppose seeing other people's biology all the time had made her sensitive to damage to herself, especially when she couldn't control her own biology.

Could she sense her own biology? I suppose it would be terrible to sense your own cancer and not be able to do anything about it.

I landed easily on the deck, water dripping from me and I grinned at her. It was nice not having to worry about sunscreen; even if I wasn't immune by this point to skin cancer, I knew the country's preeminent healer.

Besides, I was probably immune.

"Do you have to make everything about training?" Amy asked. "This is supposed to be fun."

"It is!" I insisted. "You should come down; I've gotten to where I can keep the sharks away almost every time."

"And the one time you don't?" she asked.

"I'm fast enough to stop them," I said. "Trust me."

She paled a little and for a moment I was confused. I supposed it was possible that she'd had similar conversations with Glory Girl, before she'd been killed.

She shook her head. "I'm fine up here. It's kind of nice not having anything to worry about... school, healing people. Just listening to music and relaxing."

We were playing Dad's playlist, which was a lot of old music from the seventies and eighties. It was all smooth, relaxing music. I'd grown up with this music, but Panacea seemed to have never heard a lot of it. Hadn't New Wave played any old music?

In the old, better days Dad had delighted in sharing the things he loved with me. It was the reason I knew anything about old movies or books or music.

Maybe Carol Dallon had been too busy, or maybe she'd been one of those people that pretended they liked nothing but classical music whenever people were around.

I felt a shiver of foreboding running down my spine. There was something just at the edge of my awareness, something that I couldn't quite make out, but it filled me with dread.

I staggered suddenly as the entire world felt like it had exploded around me. It was pure, unmitigated power, more Ki than I'd ever experienced before all concentrated in one area. The entire city of Brockton Bay didn't have this kind of energy combined. It was at the far reaches of my range, and yet it felt like it was right beside me.

Was it Scion?

Was this what they were expecting me to fight? Alexandria was a hundred times as strong as I was, and besides this her power was a pale shadow. I'd never reach this level of power, not it I trained for a thousand years.

A shiver of horror struck me as I realized that it wasn't likely to be Scion because of a single fact. It was coming from below us, heading for the islands.

"Guys," I said. I could feel the blood draining from my face.

"What is it?" Dad asked. Suddenly he stiffened too as he felt it. His range wasn't nearly what mine was, bu this power was so incredible that he could feel it from hundreds of miles away.

Given the fact that it was coming from under the Earth, and it was moving fairly rapidly, but not as quickly as any of the other two Endbringers, there was only one entity it could be.

"We need to get dressed," Dad said. "Suit up."

"What's going on?" Amy asked.

"Behemoth," I said. "And it feels like he's coming here."

On land he was the slowest of the Endbringers, but he was moving much faster underground, probably as a result of his powers. At the rate he was moving we didn't have long before he was going to arrive.

Amy stared at us, her face paling. So did the other PRT agents on the ship.

One of the PRT agents came out of the control room. He was a large Samoan man in a Hawaiian shirt, and every time I'd seen him he'd been friendly and easy going. Now, though, he was sweating and his face was pale.

"The Endbringer alarms are going off on the Big Island," he said.

"It's Behemoth, isn't it?" I said.

"It's Behemoth," Agent Matua confirmed. "They say he's coming out of Kilauea and the Thinkers believe he's going to make it erupt."

"Where are they gathering?" I asked.

Clearly there wasn't time to wait for the boat to head back. We were going to have to fly there ourselves.

The agent handed me a cell phone. "It's a satellite phone, and it has an app that will show you where you will need to go."

"One of us will navigate and the other will carry Amy," Dad said. "It's probably not safe to do both."

Even if I dropped Amy I could probably catch her before she went splat, but considering that what had happened to Mom was probably on his mind, I didn't argue.

"I'll take her," I said. "I'm faster and can probably protect her better if anything unfortunate should happen."

He nodded and reached out to take the phone.

We all went below decks to switch into our costumes. I'd wondered why the PRT had insisted that we bring them; had they somehow expected that this was going to happen?

Five minutes later we were back on deck, and I was picking Amy up.

"Have you been to one of these before?" I asked.

"The last one was my first time," she said. She looked grim. "I didn't have to heal nearly as many people as I'd thought."

"Isn't that good... oh."

The Simurgh hadn't left enough of people for Panacea to heal. Now we were facing the Hero Killer, the Endbringer who had the record for the most kills of all of the three.

At the speeds I was flying I could have been there in less than a minute; carrying Amy I had to fly slower, and Dad couldn't even begin to keep up with me. It still only took us five minutes to reach the place on the map on the phone.

There wasn't much to it. It was on a beach, and there were nearly a hundred capes there. If it had been Leviathan attacking they'd never have set up here, but Behemoth was surfacing further inland. The Big Island was ninety two miles long and seventy six miles wide. Against a normal opponent that would be plenty of room, but Behemoth could easily destroy the entire island.

Nowhere on the island would be safe, and the closest other island was only twenty six miles away. It would be easy for Behemoth to simply wipe out the entire chain of islands.

Faces everywhere were grim, but as I landed, I could see people whispering among themselves. Most likely it was because I'd killed the Nine. Maybe it was because I was considered the second coming of Alexandria.

Alexandria herself came striding up to me.

"We'd hoped to give you more time before this fight," she said. "I expect that you will go down, possibly more than once. To that end we have hired a teleporter specifically to pull you from the battlefield."

She nodded at a man in a top hat wearing a red mask. He nodded at her.

"If we manage to pull you out in time, there's a chance you'll get stronger. Don't count on it; Panacea can't heal you if you are dead. We don't need a repeat of the Ash Beast incident."

"I can feel how strong he is," I said. "I'm not looking forward to this fight."

I was lying, of course. I'd noticed that the boosts I got in power from healing tended to be higher when I fought opponents who outmatched me. What kind of boost would I get from a power this strong?

Of course, Behemoth was so powerful that it might not matter. I could die in the first attack like a chump, burned alive from the inside just like when I'd fought the Ash Beast, but worse. Behemoth was known as the Hero Killer for a reason.

I glanced at the teleporter. The Endbringers weren't stupid. He'd only be able to pull me out once, twice maybe before the Endbringer noticed and killed him. He had to be insane to take on a job like that.

Given Behemoth's powers, everyone out here had to be insane.

She glanced back at the crowd. Legend was there somewhere speaking, but I couldn't hear what he was saying over the sound of the surf and the murmuring of the crowd. That was the disadvantage of this staging area, I supposed.

"We've got a medical ship coming," she said to Panacea. "Hopefully it'll be able to get out of the way should Behemoth attack the wounded, but you should be careful."

Panacea nodded grimly.

"What should I do?" I asked.

"Behemoth's a dynakinetic," she said. "He can redirect any energy used against him, and that means that blasts as strong as yours can be used to kill a lot of people."

"So hand to hand?" I asked.

"He has been known to burn heroes up from the inside out if they approach him," she said. "Recommended radius is at least a hundred feet away from him."

"So how in the hell do we fight him?" I asked.

"He can only redirect attacks if he knows they are coming," she said. "We have to use wolf pack tactics; one attacking from the front while three attack from behind."

He had other attacks too, missile attacks that made him a nightmare to fight for anyone, more than fighting Leviathan. The Simurgh was a different kind of nightmare.

She handed me an armband.

"Given the forces you are likely to be exposed to, I don't think this will last very long," she said. "But keep it as long as you can."

The monstrous power I'd been sensing all along suddenly surged; I froze. He was nearby, and he'd probably breached the surface.

"Behemoth has breached the surface," Dragon's voice said through the armband. "He has breached the side of Kilouea and lava is now flowing toward Hilo. Other, smaller towns will be affected before that though."

"Will the Endbringer shelters survive that?" I asked.

Alexandria shook her head. "They were only designed to protect against subsidiary damage from Endbringers. There isn't anything known that would turn one away. Even if it survived, it would cook the people inside."

I nodded.

"So we have to stop the lava before we stop Behemoth," I said.

"The lava will only move slowly," Dragon said. "Approximately one mile an hour. Behemoth will move much faster."

So the plan was to create a situation where even if we were successful in driving him back we would still see death and destruction.

Viridian jogged up toward us, followed by Liliander, Synapse and Swerve. "Does anyone have a plan?"

"I don't suppose anyone here is a massively powerful ice cape," I asked.

"No," Dragon said. "And it is possible that the interaction of ice and lava would create superheated steam clouds that would kill more people than the lava itself."

More and more people were teleporting onto the beach. They were being handed armbands even as tents were being set up. They wouldn't help much if Behemoth came rampaging through, but they would keep the salt air off.

"You are with me," Alexandria said.

I nodded.

Groups were already forming; from the look of it, flying capes were going with Legend, and I was going to be part of the Brute Squad.

I waved apologetically at Viridian. She was apparently with Legend's group. Given his ability to redirect energy, I wasn't really sure what they could do other than take their own energy to the face. Liliander was going to join search and rescue; her powers were perfect for breaking people free; at least until the radiation levels got so bad that everyone was doomed anyway.

Even if we won early, it was likely that the economy of the islands would never recover. People had an almost superstitious fear of places that had been visited by the Endbringers, even beyond the loss of property, vegetation and life.

"Listen to the directions from Dragon," Alexandria said. "She can pinpoint Behemoth with the aid of satellites."

"I won't need any help," I said grimly. "I know exactly where he is."

She nodded. A moment later we were in the air.

"The important point is that no one fights him alone," she said. "Wolf pack tactics are our only chance. We fight together or we lose."

She'd fought Behemoth more than anyone else except the other two members of the Triumvirate. I supposed that she knew what she was talking about.

It took only a moment to get to Behemoth's location. He was standing on the top of a volcano; he'd breached one of the walls, and lava was slowly pouring out of it.

He was almost fifty feet tall. His gray, leathery skin was covered in magma that still glowed red and obsidian crags, some of which were almost ten feet long. He had a single red, glowing eye, and a maw of a mouth with obsidian teeth.

From this close, his power was even greater, but unlike every other being I'd ever met, his Ki didn't emanate from his whole body. It emanated from a single point in his upper body. The rest of his body felt dead.

"He's a shell," I said.

"What?" Alexandria asked, her head snapping around.

"He's like a cape wearing powered armor," I said, trying to explain it to her. "His real self is deeper inside his body. The outside part, the part we can see... it's completely dead."

"Did you hear that, Dragon?" Alexandria asked. "We'd have to confirm that as the truth with the other Endbringers, but..."

"It means that every time we've damaged them we haven't really hurt them at all," Dragon said.

Alexandria looked grim. "But if we know where to target, we might have a chance of actually doing some damage, finally."

"It's between his shoulder blades," I said. "A little to the right."

"We'll have to be careful," Alexandria said. "Once he knows that we know his secret, he's sure to escalate in ways that we can't imagine."

"Then we'll just have to escalate more," I said, with a bravado I didn't feel. Part of me wanted this fight, desperately, but another part wanted to live to see another sunset. It was only a hour until sundown, and there was no guarantee that I'd get to see that sunset.

It was possible that I'd die ignominiously in the first minute of combat. I hoped not, hoped that the Endbringers liked to play with their food before they killed them. There was no way to know until it happened.

I looked at Dad, and I grimaced.

"Let's kill us an Endbringer."


	51. Golden

Being immersed in Lava wasn't as bad as I had thought it would be. It burned, but not much more than a scalding hot shower, and certainly nothing like the Ash Beast's flame. That was the good news.

The bad news was that I was behind held under by Behemoth's foot, and I was suffocating. The teleporter that Alexandria had hired probably worked by sight, which meant that immersed as I was, there was nothing he could do to help me.

My lungs were burning, and not from the fire.

Behemoth was impossibly strong; so much so that I had been helpless when he'd grabbed me and stomped on me. Trying to struggle against his foot was like trying to move a car that had fallen on me, before I had gained my powers. It felt like I could move the entire planet as easily as I could move this.

I struggled, but the harder I struggled the less air I had. If I didn't do something I was dead.

He hadn't even bothered to burn me from the inside out. It was like I was an afterthought, a gnat to be swatted away while he fought with the people who actually mattered.

If I couldn't move Behemoth, then I'd move the ground below his feet.

I shoved myself downward; further into the lava and through solid rock until I felt Behemoth's foot leave my back. A moment later I was shooting through the lava and exploding upward on the other side of the volcano. I flew upward as quickly as I could before I took a deep breath; the gasses above a volcano could be lethal.

Fighting Behemoth had always been a nightmare, but the defenders couldn't even stay close by because of the gasses coming from the volcano. Most of the Brutes who were strong enough to go hand to hand with behemoth even for a little while could take the heat, but they all needed to breathe.

Even Alexandria only fought him for periods as long as she could hold her breath. Because she was immune to being burned from the inside out, she was the main fighter who could affect him, even a little bit.

It was a clever tactic, fighting in a place that was inhospitable to everyone, but given his power it wasn't really one that he needed. My bet was that he was here for a reason. No one thought the Simurgh was an unthinking beast; why should the others be unintelligent either? They wouldn't be as good as they were at killing heroes if they weren't clever.

A mindless beast could have simply been led away from inhabited areas.

I didn't know enough about Volcanoes to figure out his plan. I tapped the communicator on my arm; my clothes had survived the lava because I was protecting them with Ki, but I wasn't sure how sensitive the tech was to heat.

"Dragon, is there any way to figure out why he decided on this location?" I asked. "Whatever it is, it can't be good."

"I will look into it," she said.

I nodded, and then I charged toward Behemoth's back, picking up speed as I went. The world seemed to slow to a crawl around me, even Alexandria, although I could see from her eyes that she was aware of me at least.

As I got close I felt a sudden pain burning in my belly. I felt as though I was burning up inside, and soon I found myself veering away. I saw other heroes who had approached too close disintegrating, burned from the inside out.

A moment later I found myself somewhere else, with Panacea standing over me.

"Ouch... she's hot!" Pancea said. "Get me some water!"

I blacked out.

As I woke I felt power surging through me. It wasn't just twice as strong; I felt like I had to be at least five times as strong.

"You were burning from the inside out," Panacea said grimly.

"How long was I unconscious?" I asked.

"Five minutes," she said.

I could feel Dad on the periphery of the battle. He wasn't fighting Behemoth at all; instead he was dragging combatants who were down away and helping the wounded.

Without saying anything I exploded out of the tent and back into combat. Behemoth was turned away from me as I picked up speed. A moment later I was moving so fast that the world around me went quiet; I had passed the sound barrier.

I hit hit him between the shoulder blades at ten times the speed of sound and the world exploded into pain around me. I went flying hundreds of feet into the air, but Behemoth also went flying. He stumbled and fell to his knees.

He looked up at me a moment later, and lightning exploded around me. I screamed in pain, and the lightning seemed to go on and on forever.

I blacked out, and a moment later I woke with Panacea standing over me. Smoke was still rising from my hair.

I was surging with even more power, stronger by far than ever before. I felt like nothing could ever stop me, and I grinned.

"Stop this," Panacea said urgently. "You are going to get killed."

I flew back to the combat, arriving there in the space of an instant. The defenders looked like they were standing still, and there were a lot less of them. Dragon's ships were trying to stop Behemoth, pounding him with everything they had, but none of it was even affecting him.

I'd knocked him down before, and I was at least five times stronger now!

Alexandria was floating nearby. "Are you all right?"

I grinned. "I've never been better."

I was probably a quarter as strong as she was by now; we finally had a fighting chance.

Legend and the others were hitting him from all sides with energy, but reflected energy was making heroes drop like flies. I saw Viridian grabbing capes out of the air and sending them back to the back lines.

"Wolf pack," she said.

A moment later we were both moving. I started pounding him from the front and the sides and Alexandria pounded him from the opposite direction. I could feel some give to his flesh, so I tried pounding in the same places. There were cracks forming in his skin, and I felt excited.

He swung at me, but it was like he was moving in slow motion. I felt a burning in my gut, but unlike the incredible pain that I'd felt before, now it was mild and manageable.

I couldn't be stopped. I swung at him again, and I felt power explode from his skin. He was redirecting my own punches back at me! I screamed and I hit him harder. If he was blocking me then he couldn't be blocking Alexandria, which meant that I was doing my job.

The force of my own blows was raining down upon me, but I couldn't stop. I couldn't ever stop, not as long as this monster was trying to destroy the world.

Behemoth's fist reached out, faster than I'd ever seen him move before, and he grabbed my ankle. A moment later he was slamming me into Alexandria, batting her more than a thousand feet away. With her temporarily away from us both, Behemoth grabbed my other arm and pulling on my ankle and my arm he started pulling.

I screamed as I felt my joints pop out of their sockets. He was going to pull me apart.

A moment later I was back to Panacea's station.

"Your face looks like hamburger," she said. She grimaced. "I've never healed anyone this often in this short of a time. Are you an idiot?"

I grimaced. "The longer I fight, the fewer people are hurt."

There was an explosion over the hill, light expanding so that it was dazzlingly bright. As Panacea healed me, I felt a rush of power, but not as much as I'd felt the other times. Whether this was because I wasn't as close to death or because the gap between me and Behemoth was slowly closing I couldn't be sure.

Still, I was getting faster every time, which was almost as important as getting stronger. I couldn't keep letting him get to me, or sooner or later he would finish what he started before Panacea could get to me.

I was over the hill faster this time, and I slammed into Behemoth again. He was ready for me this time, and I found myself flying backwards as fast as I'd flown forward. I saw him shooting lighting in a wave, wiping out people in the air.

One of them was Viridian. One moment she was there and the next all that was left were ashes that floated away with the wind.

I felt numb. I'd known her, even if it was just for a little while, and she'd trusted me to keep her safe. How was I going to look Liliander in the eye and tell her that her Sister was dead?

Dad was nowhere to be seen. I could feel that he was back at the healer's camp, probably taking wounded to be healed. There weren't that many; Behemoth was killing capes efficiently, more than he usually did.

Normally Behemoth killed one in four capes or perhaps one in three. He'd already killed that many, and he showed no sign that he intended to stop.

Was it because I was here; was he matching his attacks to the opposition he was facing? That would mean that he'd been holding back, intentionally pretending to be weaker than he really was.

If people knew he was really unbeatable, they simply wouldn't play. They'd abandon cities to him, and Capes would remain safe. By pretending that there was hope, he tricked them into entering the meat grinder.

I flew straight up in the air, up into the clouds. I began gathering energy into myself. Physical attacks weren't doing anything; neither were attacks by Legend or any of the others. I didn't know how my energy attacks compared to those of Legend or anyone else, but I knew that I had a single shot at hitting him when he didn't know what was happening.

"Ka..." I said.

I was fifty times as strong as before; half as strong as Alexandria. That meant that my Ka Me Ha Me Ha wave was five times as powerful as anything she could generate. I just had to hit him when he wasn't expecting it.

"Me..."

I pulled more and more energy from all around me. I was going to put everything I had into this; maybe it would be enough to wound him; if it did, he would leave. I'd have time to get stronger so that the next time we met I'd finally be able to kill him.

The important thing was to make sure that no one else died.

"Ha..."

There couldn't be any more Viridians; there couldn't be any more people who had been under my command, who trusted me to keep them safe.

I'd keep them all safe.

"Me..."

This was power beyond anything I'd ever known. I said into my communicator "Dragon, can you have everyone except Alexandria pull back?"

"Noted," she said.

Apparently my communicator had been fast tracked to Dragon compared to others, probably because Alexandria had such high hopes for me.

I held the power inside me, dragging in more and more.

"HAAAAA!"

A bolt of power exploded from me, dropping toward Behemoth through the clouds. To distract him, I dropped down, and hit him from the side, punching and kicking for all I was worth. He was immobile this time, which didn't matter. I was in control of the beam, and even if he should redirect it, I'd just redirect it back.

His fist lashed out and caught me in the side of the head. He hit me so hard that my head rang. He grabbed me and crushed me to his chest, and a moment later we were hit by my beam.

Light exploded all around us and I screamed in agony. My own attack was incredibly painful, and a moment later I felt it leaving us and heading north?

I tried to grab the energy, to bring it back, but it was slippery somehow. I felt it burn through the side of the volcano, then through the forest below. It burned and it kept on burning.

As he held me, I could feel the town of Hilo in the distance. There were forty three thousand people there. He was crushing me, but I barely noticed. I struggled to grab the energy, but I could feel him controlling the energy back every time I tried to grab control.

Alexandria pummelled him, and I gasped in the poisonous fumes, but it didn't matter.

Where was the man who was supposed to teleport me? If I could get between the energy beam and the town then I could stop it; I knew it.

I searched for his Ki signature and I couldn't find it. He was dead, unless he'd somehow teleported out of my range. Considering that I could now sense almost the entire planet, that seemed unlikely.

The blast plowed through the town, cutting a swath right through the middle of it. I could feel life forms simply snuffing out, vanishing as the Endbringer shelters they'd been huddling in simply disintegrated or ceased to exist.

The blast continued on to the ocean, and I finally managed to yank it up so that it exploded high in the air, likely blinding everyone within a thousand miles.

Thousands of people were dead because of me. I grabbed Behemoth, and I flew upward. His feet left the ground and he started to pull me tighter. I couldn't breathe, but it didn't matter.

I was going to take him into space; powers didn't work up there and maybe that meant that he wouldn't either. It would mean that I would die, but I'd deserved it.

I'd been so upset about the death of Viridian, a girl I'd known for the space of a single weekend. So I'd killed thousands.

Putting the job of saving the world in the hands of a fourteen year old girl; what the hell had Alexandria been thinking? She should have beaten Dad and never stopped until he was strong enough to do what had to be done.

I could see the wide gouge in the city below me now; the lights were on on one side, and on another, but there was only blackness in between. I'd done that.

Behemoth began pounding on me, harder and harder. I felt lightning fill me, and despite myself my muscles contracted. I let go of him, and he fell back to earth.

As powerful as he was, the fall wouldn't do anything to him. With my luck he'd fall right in the middle of the healer's camp. He'd kill Panacea, kill Dad. He'd kill Liliander, everyone that I cared about.

Would Garrett and Leet get out? Or were they huddled in the middle of an Endbringer shelter with all of the other people, listening to people cry out in horror as they waited to die.

I wasn't strong enough. I had been fooling myself to think that I ever would be. I wasn't just incapable of helping; I had made it so so much worse.

Because of me people that I had never met would never see their fathers, their grandmothers, their sisters and brothers. Dad had been devastated when Mom had died; so had I. Now we were going to multiply that pain by a factor of ten thousand... more, because every person I'd killed had many family members.

I screamed.

It felt like I couldn't stop screaming, and as I did, I saw lighting begin to flash all around me. It wasn't being generated by Behemoth, but there wasn't a cloud in the sky.

All I could feel was rage, pure rage. There was something happening in my back. I looked down at myself, and my vision flickered gold. My muscles were bulging in my arms; the dragon communicator snapped off my arm.

What was happening to me?

It didn't matter, I decided. It didn't matter what happened to me. All that mattered was that Behemoth be made to _pay_ for what he had done.

I screamed in earnest now as I felt power rushing into me; it was power far beyond anything I could have ever comprehended. It was painful, but somehow it felt _right_.

A moment later, the entire world turned _gold._


	52. Hunters

"We're getting slaughtered," the unknown cape gasped.

Amy healed him without commenting. She'd been to an Endbringer battle once before, and the first time, hearing all the pain and fear from people who were supposed to be heroes had disturbed her deeply.

However, in the intervening time she had seen that everyone was afraid, whether they were fighting Endbringers or not. The only difference was what they were afraid of. Death, loneliness, rejection... everyone was afraid of something, and in the end all of it started to blend together.

Now, even pain that would have bothered her before wasn't bothering her much. The world felt numb and gray since Vicki had died. Even Carol, who had never been much of a mother had meant something to her, and seeing them all forced to kill each other... she didn't like to think of those memories.

It was easier to keep one foot moving in front of another and do what was expected of her, because if she didn't, she'd stop screaming and she'd never stop.

The man she was treating stood up. His hands were shaking; normally she'd have attributed it to the aftereffects of adrenaline, but she'd taken care of those. This was different; his will to fight had been broken, and she suspected that this was the last Endbringer fight he'd ever attend.

From what she'd heard, this fight was actually going better than usual fights; Sparta and Alexandria were working hard to keep Behemoth occupied, which meant he was not killing as many of the others. Amy had vaguely realized that Sparta was powerful, but she hadn't realized that she was strong enough to go toe to toe with an Endbringer and survive.

Still, the deaths that were happening were as horrible as always. There hadn't been all that many of the injured; mostly those who came in were having respiratory problems from exposure to the toxic gasses being emitted by the lava. There were a few burns, but most people were sensible enough to stay away from lava.

There had been a few brutes who had thought they were more durable than they actually were, of course.

Danny Hebert stepped into the room. He was carrying two more people, one under each arm, lugging them like stacks of grain.

"Got too close to the lava," he said. "Damn fools."

He looked like he'd aged ten years in the space of an hour. Amy could understand how he felt; if Vicky had still been alive, and she'd been out there fighting, Amy wouldn't have been able to think about anything else.

"She's getting stronger," she told him absently. "Every time she comes back here. I can sense it."

He looked at her and scowled. "Strong enough to survive Behemoth? He keeps hurting her and hurting her, and sooner or later her luck will... "

He stopped and turned, staring up at the top of the tent.

Amy couldn't see what he was looking at, but a moment later she felt the hairs rising on her arms. Something was about to happen, but she didn't know what. She felt it in the depth of her stomach.

The world outside the tent seemed to explode as lightning struck only feet away from them. The world suddenly went silent, and Amy knew that the sound had done something to her hearing. She saw the scalpels and other tools on the table beginning to float silently into the air, even as her own hair began to wreathe her face.

The tent ripped away, and it began to float upward as well before suddenly being ripped away by a gust of wind.

Mr. Hebert moved in a flash to protect her and the other two.

They were revealed to be on a beach that might have once been pretty. However, the air was filled with soot and ash, and it gave the sky a sullen, overcast look.

Amy's hearing returned just in time to feel the hairs on her arm rising again. She crouched down and covered her ears with her hands.

"Get down!" Mr. Hebert shouted to everyone else, and heroes and medical staff all dropped as lightning began to explode all around them.

Rocks were rising into the air all around them, and in the distance Amy thought she could hear someone screaming. The screaming seemed to take forever, longer than the human throat should have managed.

In the distance Amy could see what looked like a falling star. It was moving toward them at an unimaginable speed, and she felt frozen, knowing that there was nowhere to run. At the last moment she realized that it wasn't going to hit her; instead it flashed toward the ocean.

Water exploded as it impacted, and for a moment she could not see what was happening. The water stilled after several moments, and slowly Amy rose to her feet, helped by Mr. Hebert.

Her heart dropped when a familiar head crested the surface, staring at them with an unmistakable malevolence. He was walking forward slowly, implacably, as though he had all the time in the world. Yet Amy knew there was nowhere she could run. His energies could reach her wherever she went.

Now Behemoth was in the shallows, two hundred yards away. Scalding steam rose from his body. The water barely rose to his chest, and thousands of dead fish were already floating to the surface. The radiation he was emitting was deadly; Amy knew that he wouldn't have to do anything to kill her other than coming close enough. Worse, she couldn't heal herself and the type of damage he caused would be hard for other healers to heal.

Yet she couldn't move. Terror filled her in a way it had never had before. Even when she'd been held by the Slaughterhouse it hadn't been like this. She'd felt afraid; she'd felt impotent rage, but there was no place for rage against a force of nature.

Against any normal opponent, even one of the Slaughterhouse members she could have used her powers to protect herself. Even if her powers worked on Endbringers, which seemed doubtful since biokinetics had tried before, she'd be dead long before she could touch them. The Simurgh would see her coming. Leviathan was too fast, and Behemoth would boil her from the inside out.

Behemoth was huge; far larger than any of the rare, grainy video footage made him out to be. As he came closer, more and more of his form was revealed. Even now, steam was rising from his body. He was covered in magma which had not yet cooled despite being immersed in water, and he was _terrifying_.

Most of the strongest heroes were on the other side of the mountain; the assumption had been that Behemoth was slow enough that the wounded would be able to move before he could reach them.

The speed he was moving forward now didn't seem slow at all, even though it couldn't have been much more than a fast walk. Because he was so large each step carried him further than a normal person could walk in many, and slow movements carried him a great distance. The water didn't seem to slow him at all.

Everyone around her was frozen; no one wanted to draw his attention by being the first to move, but if no one moved then he'd simply burn them to death when he got close enough.

Danny Hebert stepped in front of Amy.

"I'll try to distract him," he said. "You need to run. You are too important to the world to..."

There was a sudden explosion in front of them as something plowed into Behemoth at unbelievable speeds. Behemoth simply vanished, presumably knocked away at speeds that were faster than Amy could perceive.

Sparta was there suddenly. Her helmet was gone, and her face was revealed, but she didn't seem to notice. Her hair was different. Before it had been long, curly and black. Now it was golden blonde. It was standing on end, wreathing her head like flickering flames.

Her eyes were no longer dark; they were a startling greenish blue. There was a golden aura rising from her body.

She turned to face them and there was nothing merciful in her expression. All Amy could see was rage.

"Get them out of here," she said to Danny Hebert. "They won't be needed any more."

"You can't..." he said, and then he stopped, staring at her. He grimaced. "How can you be so...?"

She turned away, already haven lost interest. A moment later she was gone.

"You heard her," Danny Hebert said. "Let's get everybody onto the ships."

* * *

"Do you see them?" Eidolon asked.

Alexandria and Legend were floating to either side of them, and both shook their head.

"I don't know what she was thinking," Alexandria said. "It's impossible for one cape to fight Behemoth alone."

They all knew what she meant. He would simply redirect the energy they were using somewhere else. It had been a constant in their fights with him over the years. They'd stayed alive by dealing with that knowledge.

"There," Legend said. A moment later he was gone. A moment later he was back, looking confused.

"There's Behemoth on an island," he said. "and he's acting like he's fighting but I can't see anyone."

They followed him and a couple of minutes later they cautiously came onto the scene. Behemoth wasn't looking well. Chunks of him were gone, most of them focused on his chest, although he was already missing large chunks of his left arm.

He spun around, lashing out, and lighting exploded against a nearby mountain. He roared, and chunks exploded off his arm.

"Is someone invisible?" Legend asked. "What's going on?"

"Let me see if I can find out," Eidolon. He searched out instinctively for a power to let him see.

It took a few moments, and when he finally could see, his eyes widened.

"It's Sparta," he said. "She's just moving too fast for us, or Behemoth to see."

"And what he can't see he can't redirect," Alexandria said, catching on instantly.

Eidolon had found himself jealous of her thinker power; it wasn't that he couldn't have something similar himself, but when it went away he felt... _less_. He'd tried becoming smarter in the past, hoping to gain insight on how to deal with his waning powers. Nothing had ever worked, and when he'd been inevitably forced to swap out the power for something else, he'd been left with an acute realization of just how slow and plodding his thought processes had become.

"This is as bad as I've ever seen him," Legend said, expertly surveying the damage. "She's cutting holes in his chest by pounding away at him with her fists. I think she's hitting his back and arm too, switching the order so that he can't keep up with the pattern."

"He gets tougher the farther in you go," Eidolon reminded him testily. "We've seen this kind of damage before."

"Never from one cape," Legend said.

Behemoth spotted them, and a moment later a massive bolt of energy exploded toward them, faster than any of them had ever seen Behemoth move. Eidolon didn't have a chance to move, which had never happened before.

The world turned white in front of him, and the sound of the thunderclap left him feeling deaf.

It took him a moment to realize that someone was standing in front of them. It was Sparta, but not a Sparta that he'd ever seen before.

She'd interposed herself in between the bolt of energy and them; it was impressive that she'd figured out Behemoth's plan of attack in time to anticipate him. Even at her power level she couldn't be faster than light.

She was a little terrifying, even though he was the strongest Cape on the planet.

"I need you to leave now," Sparta spat out. She didn't seem fazed by the fact that she'd just been blasted by energy levels that Eidolon knew had killed some of the strongest brutes on the planet. "I don't have time to babysit you."

Outrage filled him.

"Babysit..." he sputtered.

"None of you are fast enough or strong enough to do what has to be done," she said. "And so you need to get out."

Before he could reply, she was gone, vanished, moving faster than even he could see with his enhanced vision.

Behemoth roared, and Eidolon grimaced.

She couldn't dismiss him like that! He was Eidolon, the most powerful man in the world and he would not be dismissed by anyone!

"She doesn't know what she's talking about," he said. "No matter how fast she is it's not going to matter. She needs our help."

"Do you have a power that will let you sense relative power levels?" Alexandria asked.

Eidolon frowned. He hadn't needed a power like that, ever.

It took a moment to find, and another few moments to call up. Behemoth launched more lightning in their direction, but Alexandria grabbed him and moved him further away.

Eidolon opened his eyes and he stared.

"Her power..." he gasped. "It's blinding."

He looked at Alexandria and Legend for comparison, and their abilities seemed dim and drab by comparison. He wondered how his own power would compare, especially now that he was a shadow of his former self.

Eidolon's head snapped around."There's something wrong. Behemoth's power level is increasing. That shouldn't be possible."

He was clearly moving faster now. Even though Sparta was still imperceptible, there were times when the air itself seemed to explode outward as he managed to catch the pattern and redirect her own force back at her.

Eidolon had sometimes wondered late at night whether the Endbringers were really showing their true strength. After all, if they were only as powerful as they were commonly perceived to be, someone, somewhere would have destroyed them simply through sheer luck.

Instead they seemed to back off mainly when they'd taken a certain amount of damage, often when pushing forward would have given them the victory they seemed to be seeking.

Endbringer battles were bad, but usually three people in four survived. If the Endbringers were really out for maximum damage they could have fought much more efficiently.

Leviathan could have pounded cities from the depth of the ocean floor, gradually drowning the world and never leaving himself to be threatened by anyone.

The Simurgh could have attacked from high in the atmosphere. No one knew how far her telekinesis reached, but her song didn't depend on sound at all. She could have warped city after city at a height no ordinary hero could fight at.

Behemoth could have simply chosen to make volcanoes erupt, turning city after city into ancient Pompeii without ever risking himself.

Instead, they chose fights that seemed to be a useless risk in the service of their long term goal, for no apparent reason. The only thing that had occurred to him was that they could be like sports hunters.

Sports hunters sometimes handicapped themselves; they didn't throw dynamite in a pond and collect the dead fish that rose to the surface because there was no satisfaction in that. They worked with a rod and a reel.

They sometimes used crossbows and bows and arrows instead of poison gas and explosives.

They did it because it was satisfying to kill.

Still, he hadn't realized that they'd been sandbagging by this much. The power levels he could feel emanating from both combatants was incredible.

There was a pulse, and he went flying back even though Alexandria was in front of him. He saw the plant life on the island below turning black and catching fire, and the circle was growing.

An explosion sent Sparta flying backward. From the expression on her face she'd seen the problem. She stopped beside them and said "Is there an uninhabited island I can take this to?"

The communicator on her arm was gone; wordlessly, Alexandria handed the one off her arm to her.

"Ka'ula island," Dragon said. "It's a hundred and fifty eight acre outcrop of rock that is a hundred and fifty miles west of Honolulu."

Eidalon felt his neck snap as Alexandria grabbed him and jerked him to the side. A blast of energy so massive that it filled the sky exploded through the space they had just been in. It covered a huge area, and it blinded him.

In the battles they'd had before, a single blast like that would have wiped out all the opposition at once.

As he called up a regenerative ability, Eidolon felt sick. He'd thought he was the hero, when in reality he was just the rabbit fighting the hunter, thinking himself clever because the hunter had finally bagged his limit.

Sparta floated where she'd been, her arms held out in front of her as though she could block an energy attack with her arms.

A moment later she disappeared, and so did Behemoth.

"Damn," Eidolon murmured.


	53. Black

It was amazing how clear things became once I'd transformed into... whatever this was. I hadn't realized how clouded by emotion I had been. I'd been so focused on the thousands of deaths that I'd caused that I'd lost sight of the millions of deaths I was going to prevent.

Now, though, I burned with righteous anger.

Seeing Alexandria, Eidolon and Legend standing there indecisively was irritating to say the least. Each of them had been fighting for longer than I'd been alive, and they should have seen the tactical sense in what I was doing.

While it was true that Alexandria was able to take Behemoth's blasts, I suspected that she still needed to breathe, and in Behemoth's current mood he'd take advantage of that the same was he'd tried to drown me. He'd use her as a hostage against me, and that was something that I could not allow.

Of course, even with my currently power level it wasn't like I could force them to go. Legend and Alexandria were fast enough that they'd be back from wherever I put them in a short period. Eidolon would doubtlessly pull some kind of master power out of his ass, and then I'd be under the control of people who had no idea what to do with a power like mine.

At this point I barely knew what to do with them. This was power beyond anything I could dream, and at the outer edges of my consciousness I could sense that Ki was useful for a lot more than just blowing things up.

Each time I'd been teleported, and especially by different people I'd seen more and more commonalities between them. I suspected that a few more times and I'd figure out the trick; of course, by now I moved so fast I probably appeared to be teleporting to those around me.

For the moment, there wasn't time to experiment. I needed to focus, or I'd never be able to do what had to be done.

Getting through the first layers on the outside of Behemoth had been easy, but the deeper I went the harder it got. I hadn't been trying that hard so far; I'd been more concerned about making sure that I could move around him and confuse him so that he wouldn't be able to redirect my energy.

After all, the force I was hitting him with now was at least five times as strong as the Kamehameha that had destroyed thousands of people. If he redirected the energy downward, on a volcanic island it was possible that he might be able to do much more damage than that.

Looking back, I could see that the others were finally starting to move. In their defense, the speed I was now moving at made ordinary human beings seem to be as still as statues even when they were moving.

They probably hadn't been floating there for all that long; it just seemed like an eternity to me because of my altered sensation of time.

I moved slightly to the right as Behemoth launched a blast at my back. His blasts were faster than mine, and even at this speed they were faster than I could dodge. But I could sense the power building up in him, which gave me a moment's warning, and a moment was all it took for me to dodge.

I flew toward him, and I started again, chipping away at him. The hardest part wasn't the fact that he was getting harder and harder. It was varying my attacks so that he didn't catch onto the pattern.

It was impossible not to have one, even if it was an unconscious one, and it was possible that he would...

Fire exploded against my arm as the force of my own blow was added to his own power. That wasn't an an ability he'd shown in the past, but it was certainly one he was able to use. Even if he wasn't able to generate enough energy on his own to kill me, I was certainly strong enough to kill myself.

This wasn't a certain thing, even if it was like fighting a statue. He was crafty, waiting and biding his time. He was tough enough that it would take a while to get to his core, and in the meantime all it would take would be for me to make some mistakes.

One wasn't going to be enough, of course, unless he redirected a Kamahameha, which I had no plans on letting him do. I'd learned my lesson.

For a moment I considered throwing him up in the air and simply blasting him into space. Even if he redirected the power of my blast, it would redirect it downward and simply propel him further into space.

However, when it hit the ground I couldn't be sure of just how much damage it might do. I'd struck a glancing blow earlier with my beam; even if I hadn't regained control of it the beam would have shot off into space due to the curvature of the Earth.

It was possible that at my current power level I might be able to blow an entire island off the map... or the entire chain. Giving that kind of power to Behemoth wasn't something I wanted, but I couldn't let him get away either.

He'd killed too many people, and he was going to kill many more if I didn't stop him. The deaths I'd caused would only be worthwhile if I killed the Endbringer. Otherwise I would be a mass murderer with more kills than many members of the Slaughterhouse with nothing to show for it.

I grimaced as he redirected the force of my blow, hitting me in the abdomen with my own power with some added for good measure. As fast as I was, there were going to be times when he managed to catch me; it was something I had to be prepared for.

He grabbed my arm, his massive fist wrapping around my arm and holding on with a grip that only a few minutes ago had felt like iron.

Now I simply gathered my will, and while I was punching him with my other hand, I murmured Ka Me Ha Me Ha under my breath.

He roared as his arm disintegrated under the force of my blast at point blank range.

The important point was to hide my Ki. I was figuring out how to do it as the fight went on. As long as he knew it was coming he could redirect it.

I could see drones in the distance, apparently filming what was happening. Was it Leet, or was it someone else filming the action. Ultimately it didn't matter. What mattered was that I finished this as quickly as I could before anyone else got hurt.

I punched and I punched, and the further I went in the harder it got. I was moving so fast that he couldn't keep up, chopping him down piece by piece, chipping away at the form that had been invulnerable before.

He was missing his other arm. He tried roaring, but I flashed away as I felt him begin to roar. I didn't need to go deaf. People's eyeballs had been known to explode if they got too close to his roar, and their internal organs would liquify.

Behemoth began to glow with a white light. I grimaced. It was one of his feared abilities; projecting radiation that would kill you without his having to do anything else. I had no idea how resistant to radiation I was in this form; it was possible that my teeth were about to start falling out and my hair would start coming out in clumps while I vomited blood.

That meant that I didn't have forever to do this. Radiation was cumulative; it could build up in your system and a certain portion of it would never leave.

He was getting hotter now; this wasn't radiation, but was simple heat. It wasn't the relatively minor heat of lava; this was heat like that of the sun. I continued punching, even as I felt my hands blistering from the point of contact. Pieces of him were coming off, but not fast enough.

I was getting closer and closer to his core, but each layer was taking me twice as long as the layer before. In the meantime I was getting more and more hurt through the simple process of hitting him.

This wasn't an opponent you could banter with; as far as anyone knew he couldn't talk, although it seemed likely that he understood languages.

The heat continued to grow, and my hands continued to blister. I was getting more and more tired; the effort of moving and never stopping was getting more and more onerous. More and more often I found myself being hit by my own blow, and I could feel my eye begin to swell as my head snapped back.

He was hitting me with his lightning more and more often; I was slowing, and that was giving him opportunities that he hadn't had before. He was winning through simple attrition; he didn't need to be as fast as I was; he simply needed to outlast my energy.

Clearly he didn't think that I was going to be able to beat him; otherwise he would have attempted to flee. Instead he was just waiting until I let my guard down, and then he would have me.

I stopped, floating before him, gasping for air. My hands and the shins of my legs were bloodied. Hitting rock sounded like something Garrett would have had me doing in my early days of training; I was glad now that I had learned to accept pain.

"You still aren't as bad as the Ash Beast, monster," I gasped.

He stared at me inscrutably. A moment later the biggest bolt of electricity I'd seen yet came arcing out toward me. He followed it up by a roar that hit me as I dodged. I felt my ears ring, and I saw some of the drones in the distance explode from the sheer power of the roar.

He stomped the ground, and a wave of force sent me flying backwards. It didn't make any sense, but since when did powers have to make sense.

All I knew was that I needed to end this soon; I was growing weaker while he was growing stronger.

I headed for the clouds, outside of his view.

"KA ME HA ME HA!" I yelled.

I sent a ball of energy flying over the horizon. A moment later I gathered my energy again.

"KA ME HA ME HA!"

Power drained out of me and flew in the opposite direction. I flashed back down through the clouds. Behemoth was doing something on the ground below, probably something that humanity wouldn't approve of.

I hit him from behind, and I began hitting him over and over again. Chips of his flesh began flying around me, and while I felt myself getting pummeled, he was only able to redirect one attack in every ten because the ones I did hit him with were so fast.

This was much more efficient, and I felt myself digging deeper finally. It was a tremendous amount of work to dig through three and a half feet of stone like flesh on this side of his body in order to get to his center, but it was all going to be worth it if I could do what I was trying to.

He was moving now, but so slowly it felt like he was a glacier.

I switched to his front, punching away. He was better at redirecting my energy on this side, but it didn't matter. If he was redirecting one on five of my punches I was still getting through to him, even if it was only slowly.

The fact that my face and ribs felt like they were made out of hamburger wasn't relevant. Each time my head snapped back with the force of my own blow I felt my anger growing. This was the monster who had started it all. He was the one who had created such a feeling of terror in people that they no longer even tried to look for a better future.

The Endbringers had stolen Pandora's gift to humanity; hope had been long gone even by the time I was born. It wasn't just my mother's death that had put the slump in my father's shoulders; it was the death of his city. He'd dreamed of making a world where people could work and be happy, unmolested by the gangs and bullies of the world.

Behemoth had begun the process of taking that away, not just from him, but from everyone.

He deserved to die, and once he died, so did the others. It was the only way that humanity could regain its place in the world.

He was struggling now, trying to get away. Radiation was burning my skin even as heat washed over me. The heat was almost unbearably, but I kept hitting and hitting.

Lighting hit me over and over; now that I wasn't dodging as I once had I was a much easier target. I didn't care about the pain; I had to make Behemoth pay for what he had done.

I was getting close; I could feel it. I had no idea how long it had been in real time, but it felt like it had been an eternity. My arms and legs felt leaden; it was getting hard to breathe, and I couldn't be sure whether it was exhaustion or simply because the air around Behemoth was growing so hot that it was on fire.

In the end, nothing mattered but ending him. If I died, there were other people like me in the world. The Chinese had some, and there was Dad. As long as I ended this _thing_ my life would have been worth living.

My vision narrowed and all I could focus on was lifting my arms, hitting again and again. My hands were bloody and swollen now, hardly recognizable as hands at all. I was hitting a wall with my bare hands, and I wasn't sure how much more I could take.

My mother had told me a lot of stories when I was young. I'd always liked the story of John Henry, the story of the black man who had challenged the machine to see who could cut through the mountain faster. He'd won in the end, but he'd died.

The same had happened with the man in India who had cut a trail through the mountain so that his village could have access to a hospital. It had taken him years, decades even, but he'd eventually beaten the mountain.

Behemoth was my mountain, and even though I could not longer feel my hands, even though my arms felt as though they were encased in lead, I kept punching.

The energy this was taking was incredible; I suspected that my body hadn't been properly prepared for it. I couldn't hold out forever, but the one thing I told myself was just one more.

It became a mantra in my head.

One more. One more. One more.

Over and over I slammed my ruined hands into the ever more invulnerable surface of his body. Suddenly I felt his remaining hand slam into my stomach; I found myself flying through the air and into the side of a mountain on an island nearby. I didn't know which one.

Consciousness dimmed, but I forced myself to stay awake. I had to win this, no matter what the cost. Otherwise, none of it would be worth it.

I pulled myself out of the rock, only to look up and see Behemoth standing over me. He stared down at me, and a moment later he let loose onto me, hitting me with the fires of hell, so much power that I couldn't get up.

I couldn't even scream, the pain hurt so much. I'd been so close.

When the fires finally let up, I felt the golden glow around me flicker and go out. I was too exhausted to go on.

I stared up at him; in my current state there was no use in fighting; I wouldn't be able to affect him.

A moment later, I started to grin.

"You think you've won, don't you?"

He lifted his hand, planning to finish me, but then he was struck from behind by the first KA ME HA ME HA blast, the one that I'd sent flying all the way around the Earth. He roared in pain, and this time I did feel myself going deaf. I convulsed in agony.

It didn't matter; the second blast hit him in the chest a moment later.

I forced myself to put all my energy into getting away, and despite everything it wasn't enough. The second blast was enough to crack his core, and that in turn was enough to release enough energy that I found myself going blind as I tumbled through the air.

The island we'd been on was gone, but so was Behemoth. He was dead, and as I hit the water, I couldn't find it in myself to have any regrets.

The world went black.


	54. Endslayer

I woke up to the gentle hum of a plane. I could feel the vibration of the engines through the floor at my back, and it felt as though I wasn't in a bed. I was still wet, which meant that it hadn't been that long since I had fallen into the ocean.

For a moment I couldn't think of anything. I was alive, and that was enough of a surprise that it crowded out all of the other thoughts I might have had. A moment later, though, memories began to return, and I felt my stomach drop.

I'd killed thousands of people.

The fact that I'd killed an Endbringer probably meant that the world was going to give me a pass, and even if they didn't, I doubted that the Birdcage could hold me. If they really wanted me dead, most likely they'd kill me in the middle of the night as I lay sleeping, a cape able to shut down breathing or shut down the heart doing the deed.

Even that was unlikely. They needed me to kill Scion.

I could sense him now, on the other side of the world. My senses were worldwide now, and while I had to know someone to identify their Ki, his Ki was so much stronger than that of everyone else that it was obvious.

It had taken everything I had to kill Behemoth, but in terms of power Scion outclassed Behemoth like the sun was brighter than a cheap five dollar flashlight; there was simply no comparison.

Scion was so powerful that it was actually hard to sense the Ki of the people around him; his power was blinding. Against someone like that I couldn't see how I could possibly fight him.

Most likely I could kill Leviathan, assuming he didn't drown me. The Simurgh would be harder; my only chance would be to be so fast that she couldn't react even though she knew what I was going to do. If she got inside my head, it was likely that I'd be worse than any Endbringer, because at this moment no one on the planet could fight me one on one.

I could feel the other seventeen Endbringers waiting in the earth; from the amount of power they had and their similarities to the other three they couldn't be anything else.

Without the golden glow I was now twice as strong as Alexandria. With it, I suspected that I could destroy the entire planet if I really worked at it. Despite that, I probably didn't have a snake's fart of a chance to beat Scion, and I couldn't see how I was going to get strong enough, unless someone lined Endbringers up for me to fight one by one.

No one else in the entire world would be enough of a challenge for me to get much stronger. I could continue to work on technique, of course, and I would continue to train, but there would be diminishing returns without sufficient opponents.

Everything had been so clear when I was under the influence of the glow; I hadn't felt fear or doubt; the deaths of so many people hadn't crippled me. I'd had laser like focus, and an endless rage, and I'd felt so free.

Now I felt a crushing wave of depression, not merely because of all the lives I'd ended, but at the thought that there was no way for me to get strong enough to do what I had to do.

"I know you aren't asleep," Panacea said quietly.

I opened my eyes. We were on one of Dragon's transports, presumably heading back home.

So much for our vacation.

"Dragon fished you out of the water," she said. "Brought you to me. You had extensive radiation damage, although not nearly as much as I would have expected. You're lucky to be alive."

"Where's Dad?" I asked. She didn't have to tell me how close I'd come to dying. It had happened over and over again, and all it would have taken was for one thing to go wrong and I wouldn't be sitting here now.

"He's taking a different transport," she said. "There were a lot of people who needed help in the aftermath of what happened. He stayed behind to help with rescue and retrieval."

"And they didn't want you to stick around?" I asked.

She shrugged. "There was a lot of radiation going around, and I'm the only one I can't heal, so they're sending me off to safety. Apparently I'm too valuable to risk."

"And what about the volcano?" I asked.

"There are capes who are working to contain it," she said. "Without an Endbringer actively stopping them, it's not the hardest thing they have to do."

"I should probably help with that," I said, starting to sit up.

A selfish, fourteen year old part of me wished that he'd realized that I might have need him as much as those unnamed people, even though the rest of me understood. Dad had always been a leader, of the Dockworkers at least, and now that he was part of the new community of Capes, he was taking on the old comfortable role.

She shook her head. "Dragon says that you've done more than enough. There's going to be people waiting for you back at home; reporters and some political Bigwigs who want to get their picture taken with the Endslayer."

"Endslayer?" I asked.

"That's what they're calling you on social media... well, at least they were until it went down."

"What?" I asked.

"You broke the Internet," she said. "there was so much traffic that social media platforms have been going down like dominoes. The whole world is talking about you and what you did.."

I groaned and covered my face with one arm. "Are they blaming me?"

"For what?" she asked.

"All those people I killed," I said. "There were at least four or five Endbringer shelters in the way of my last blast, and I felt the people in them die."

"People die," Panacea said, shrugging. "It's what happens when Endbringers come around. Nobody is going to blame you for something that's ultimately Behemoth's fault."

I didn't say anything. I simply lay with one arm across my face. In my previous life I probably would have been cold, laying on the floor of a metal plane and being wet. There were at least a few advantages to being a brute.

"It wasn't your fault," she said. "Even if some people start to say it was."

"Wasn't it?" I asked. Behemoth had never destroyed half of a town in a single blast. He liked to take his time and spread the destruction out.

Having the power to destroy cities didn't make me an Endbringer; actually destroying cities might. It was sobering to think that I could be as destructive as Leviathan if I wasn't careful. I might me much worse if I pointed my beams straight down at the ground. That couldn't ever happen again.

"Are they?" I asked. I took my arm from my face and stared at her. One of the nice things about Amy Dallon was that she wasn't the kind of person who would try to spare my feelings."Saying it was my fault?"

She shook her head. "Everybody's too busy celebrating. There's probably going to be some people who criticize you eventually though; there always are. New Wave had its haters too; every time we attacked the ABB we were accused of helping the Empire because we were white."

She leaned forward. "You can't listen to people like that. There are always people who want to spread crap everywhere they go, because it makes them feel better about themselves."

"I was stupid, and I got a lot of people killed," I said. "That's more than just people trolling me."

"And how many would Behemoth have killed if you hadn't showed? Maybe twice as many?" she asked. "At least the people who are left don't have to flee a home that's a radioactive wasteland."

"Yeah," I said weakly. "Ki isn't radioactive. Armsmaster checked."

Because of course he did. The man was ridiculously anal about things, and for a time I'd thought he was being a control freak for no reason. I was starting to realize, though, that being that much of a perfectionist was more necessary the stronger you got.

When I'd started all this, a mistake would have just gotten myself killed, or Dad. Now I could literally destroy the planet. While there was no way to know this for certain, I could feel it in my bones. The next time I made a similar mistake everything could end.

As powerful as Behemoth had been, he'd really only had a few really strong powers. It was possible to plan around them, and I had. No amount of planning would have worked if I hadn't had the power to back it up, but it had been doable.

But I'd been having quiet conversations with Alexandria about why she thought I needed to fight and kill Scion. She hadn't revealed a lot; only that Scion or someone like him was responsible for all the powers on the planet. If that was true, wouldn't that mean that he potentially had any power?

Did it matter how strong I got if he could simply shut down my breathing, or control my mind?

How could I kill someone who was so much stronger than I was, especially if he was supposed to end the world. Alexandria hadn't explicitly said so, but she'd told me I needed to kill Scion and that the world was soon to end. I could read between the lines as well as anyone my age.

I felt tired, which was something I'd never felt before after one of Panacea's treatments. It was likely that it wasn't anything physical; most likely it was the weight of what I had done, and of what I still had to do.

I closed my eyes and pretended to sleep, and for the rest of the flight, Panacea let me.

As we landed, I opened my eyes. I could have flown the entire distance in a fraction of the time, but I'd wanted time to get my thoughts together. Mostly I'd ended up wallowing in my own guilt, which ultimately I knew wasn't healthy.

Dragon hadn't said anything during the entire flight; whether that was because she was coordinating efforts to take care of the volcano back on the island, or because she was being discreet and giving me a chance to decompress I didn't know. I was grateful either way. The last thing I wanted to do was to face people right now.

They could have transported me via Strider, but I suspected that Dragon had wanted me to have a chance to have some time alone. It showed that she had a lot more sensitivity than Armsmaster had ever shown; he likely would have had me back to working the moment Panacea healed me.

Still, there was a heaviness in my chest as Amy handed me a replica of my helmet. The original had been destroyed sometime during the battle and I'd barely even noticed. The fact that dragon had a replica already on the ship showed that someone had been planning ahead.

I put it on my head, and a moment later the door opened.

I blinked out into the lights outside; the sun had been setting in Hawaii and Brockton Bay was five hours later. It had to be at least the middle of the night by now, but there were lights everywhere.

We'd landed on the beach outside the rig. There was a huge crowd outside, even though it had to be midnight, and as I stepped into the spotlight there were roaring cheers.

I forced myself not to grimace, as much as I wanted to. At least that lesson in PR had stuck with me.

"The video of you fighting Behemoth has gone viral," Amy said quietly beside me. "Dragon posted it. Before the internet broke."

Most likely that had been what had broken the Internet. I could understand why they'd had Dragon post the video. The news of the destruction of Behemoth would make the horror of what had happened to the people in town a moot point. People tended to forget the victims of the Simurgh and others as quickly as they could.

It was a little like seeing someone with a handicap in public. Most people ignored them to the point that they didn't really even see them.

I forced myself to smile and wave, and a moment later Alexandria, Legend and Eidolon were flanking me, as though they'd been waiting for this moment to set up a sound bite. Most likely they had; I had the impression that Alexandria was very careful about the image she crafted for the public.

"Hope has been an elusive quality in our world for a long while," Legend said. "Heroic men and women laid down their lives time after time, all in the hope of slowing down an unstoppable force that was chipping away at humanity. Sometimes we succeeded in saving lives, often we failed."

He took a deep breath. "Always we left a trail of broken bodies. Every one of those people who fought were heroes, even people who in their daily lives chose to be known as villains. Yet all of us were ineffectual at doing the one thing that we always really wanted to do... end the Endbringers."

The crowd was silent, not as much as a single cough breaking their rapt attention toward him. Legend exuded charisma; he could say things that said by anyone else would seem trite or silly; from him it seemed inspiring.

"Today that all changed.," he said. "Today we looked the Endbringer in the eye and said _No more_. We told him that we will not go quietly into the night! We will survive! Today is a day that will be written in the history books as the day humanity first began to take back the world!"

The crowd cheered wildly, and even the reporters didn't seem like they wanted to ask any of the hard questions. This wasn't the crowd that would ask about a town destroyed, and it was possible that no one ever would, at least not to my face.

After all, who would taunt someone who had killed an Endbringer?

"This young woman isn't old enough to drive," Legend said. "But she faced the monster, and she won. Today we celebrate her victory, because her victory belongs to all of us!"

I forced myself to smile and wave as the PR guys had told us to do when we didn't know what to say. It was better than doing what I really wanted to do.

"You know there are nineteen other Endbringers, right?" I murmured under my breath. Legend didn't hear me, but Eidolon and Alexandria did. Alexandria was professional enough that nothing showed on her face. I felt her hand tighten on my shoulder with a force that would have crushed anyone else.

Eidolon's face turned white as a sheet.

I felt a small vindictive surge of pleasure at ruining this moment for him. He and Alexandria had sent me to fight the Endbringer without any idea whether I would survive or not, and now they were at least symbolically taking credit for what I had done.

I saw a woman in a pantsuit walking toward us. I vaguely recognized her as one of our state senators. Had the whole reason I'd been put on a plane was so this woman could get here in time to greet me?

I shook her hand and forced myself to smile. If it didn't reach my eyes I doubted that anyone noticed. At least this stupid helmet was good for something.

Letting depression overcome me wouldn't help anyone, much less the families of the people I had killed. The only way I could make it up to them was to save them, which meant that I had to save the world.

The only way I could do that was to defeat Scion, someone who had so much power that he could possibly do anything.

I was going to have to step up my game.


	55. Shucai

The next few days were a whirlwind of publicity.

Despite my reluctance, I had my picture taken with a seemingly endless line of politicians- the state governor, numerous senators and representatives, and finally the president of the United States.

How they convinced the Secret Service to let me within a thousand miles of him I would never know. If I'd wanted to kill him, there wouldn't have been a lot they could have done to stop me. Poison gas, maybe.

I tried to put the idea that Brockton Bay deserved a little financial help every time I met a politician; as much as I hated all the posturing, Dad suggested that I try to make it into a good thing by actually helping people.

To my face they always seemed receptive to the ideas, but I suspected that they were just paying lip service. Considering that I had destroyed an Endbringer, you'd think they'd have taken me seriously. The fact that I was fourteen, though, seemed to weigh heavier in their minds.

They assumed that I didn't understand about complicated matters like the economy, and jobs and the reasons that my city was failing. They didn't realize that my Dad understood perfectly well, and I'd been hearing about it for the majority of my life.

They thought I was a naive kid with the power of an atomic bomb; although they were all smiles, I could tell that deep down it terrified all of them. Alexandria, Eidolon, they were known quantities, people who could be controlled.

I was a teenager, someone controlled by my hormones. I was subject to the emotional volatility that everyone went through, but unlike my peers, when I got irritated, people would die.

No one said anything about the dead; I shouldn't have been surprised. People rarely did in the aftermath of an Endbringer attack. There was a superstitious attitude that if you thought too much about the dead it might lead the Simurgh to target your town next.

It made me ashamed, seeing the fear in their eyes. They'd only seen the tip of the iceberg of what I could do, and they feared that. How much more afraid if they realized I was strong enough to destroy the moon at the very least, and possibly the entire planet?

There was some quiet criticism on PHO, but anyone who said anything was quickly shouted down by others. Saying anything bad about me was considered almost unpatriotic. I stopped reading the PHO after a while; hearing the adulation people were showering on me made me sick to my stomach.

Instead, I focused on learning how to bring back my golden state at will. It wasn't easy to do without need or rage, and I felt impotent at first when I couldn't do it. Eventually I became irritated enough to find the power inside of me, and it was a relief to find the power again.

Even more relieving was discovering that I had no guilt when I was in that form. It was like my conscience simply dropped away, and my mind was clear as a bell. When I was like that, I could understand that what I was doing wasn't healthy, but when I dropped out of it the veil dropped back over my mind.

Life was sort of returning to normal. At least some of my entreaties were listened to, as FEMA finally started bringing shipments in to help people who'd been hurt in the Slaughterhouse attack.

I wanted to do more, but other than cleanup, my powers weren't exactly designed to help with rebuilding. I didn't know how to build a house, and even if I wanted to join one of the Christmas in April type charities that were springing up all over the place to help people get back on their feet, the Protectorate wouldn't have let me have the time.

It was a week afterwards that everything changed.

I was sitting in a conference room, listening to yet another boring meeting. I was being included in adult meetings more often now, as though that would make me think I was being taken seriously. Mostly the meetings were boring as hell, and now that the Empire and the Merchants were gone, there wasn't really a lot to talk about.

The ABB was still working, but they were keeping a very low profile. Officially Lung wasn't afraid of me; he'd fought Leviathan after all. However, I'd defeated Leviathan's big brother, and that wasn't the kind of thing that could be ignored.

The possibility of others moving in to fill the vacuum of power left by the absence of the gangs was discussed, but it seemed that no major gang thought it was a good idea to be in the same city I was.

Smaller offshoot gangs were forming here and there, but they tended to be consisted of groups of ten people or less. None of them had capes, and as such, none of them were considered to be the business of the PRT, even though they had obviously stolen weapons and materials from the gangs that had collapsed. Some of them were undoubtedly former members of the old gangs; I hadn't killed all of them even when I was in my monkey form.

I wondered momentarily whether my ape form would have been able to take on the golden transformation. That would have been a terrible disaster.

Suddenly I stiffened. Someone had arrived on the helipad, someone who hadn't been there a moment before. They'd arrived with Strider, so obviously they'd teleported. Their level of power was large by parahuman standards; they weren't as strong as Alexandria, but they were close.

There were several other people with him. The amount of Ki they had that indicated they were likely also parahumans, even though they weren't anywhere close to having the power that this man had.

"We are going to have some visitors," Piggot said. "From the CUI."

"I think they are already here," I said. "What's going on?"

"The CUI seem to think that they have some parahumans who have... similar abilities to yours," Piggot said. "They are very interested in learning how you achieved your transformation."

"Do we really want them to have that kind of power?" Assault asked, sitting up. "It's bad enough the way it is; you know what it's like over there. Giving them the kind of power she's got... it's not a good idea."

"Alexandria seemed to think it was a good idea," Piggot said. "And the director agreed. The CUI seem to think that it is important enough to make a lot of valuable concessions to the US government, enough that there is a lot of pressure from Washington to make this work."

Alexandria... of course she'd think it was a good idea. One of me meant a single point of failure. More, even if they worked for a horrible dictatorship increased our odds. How much easier would the fight against Behemoth have been if I'd had even one other person as strong as I was?

I felt a sudden chill.

These people were my family. We were directly related, even if only distantly. Would I feel a sense of kinship? Or would there be rivalry? Dad said many members of our family had killed each other over the years.

I stood up.

"I suppose I'd better go meet them."

"Your father is on his way," Piggot said. "Try not to antagonize them."

I stared at her. "You act like I'm going to say something rude."

"They aren't like us," Piggot said smoothly. "Things that wouldn't be an insult here are there. We should have had someone to brief you, but I only got the orders a couple of hours ago."

"And you had me in this meeting?" I asked.

"I had people double checking the veracity of the orders," she said. "It didn't seem likely that we'd give that kind of an advantage to the Chinese. The things they are giving up, though... I can understand why they are considering it."

"There's no guarantee that I can teach them," I said. "I'm still not sure what happened myself."

"You just have to make them believe that you are trying," she said.

I nodded.

For a moment I considered concealing my Ki, but they already knew I was here. I needed to start off on the right foot, especially because if I succeeded, then whoever this was could be the key to my getting stronger.

I'd been bemoaning the lack of opponents; life had dropped a golden opportunity right into my lap.

It took only a moment for me to reach the room, with Armsmaster close behind me. If they were hoping that he would be able to do anything involving diplomacy they were sadly mistaken.

They were standing on the rooftop.

Most of them were young, almost as young as me, but the man in the middle, the one who radiated power was different. I couldn't tell how old he was; he could have been an old twenty or a young forty. He was shorter than I was; short for a man in general, but he was massively muscled. His hair was black, spiky and it was standing up.

He was wearing some sort of black jumpsuit with white boots and gloves He had armor on his chest. He was clean shaven, and he was scowling in my direction.

The others were wearing various forms of martial arts gi in a Chinese style. Unlike him, they were looking around wide eyed and a little scared.

"Hello," I said. "I am Sparta."

"How did you become a super Saiyen?" he asked. "What trick did you use, what drug?"

"Super what?" I asked.

I thought the Chinese were supposed to be all about forming relationships before getting down to business, but he hadn't even bothered introducing himself.

He glanced at Armsmaster and sneered. "You do not even remember what you are. Your people are the degenerate offspring of those who deserted their homeland."

I found myself scowling. He was arrogant in a way I wasn't used to; the fact that I was so much stronger than he was didn't seem to bother him at all. Instead he was demanding answers as though they were his right.

"We're family," I said tightly, "Or I might take offense to that."

"You should." He said. "After all, you are the offensive one."

"Because I was the first to become a super... whatever you said?" I asked. I sneered. "How much must that gall you; I've been doing this for a few months and I'm already here, when you've been at it for what... years? Your people have been trying for this for all this time, and you've failed."

"Perhaps introductions are in order," Armsmaster said awkwardly.

The man didn't even look at him. Instead, he said "I am Shucai. The names of these others do not matter. They are simply here to observe, to learn, and perhaps to become a little stronger in the service of the Emperor."

I stared at him. From what little Alexandria had told me, these people weren't actually members of the Yangban; apparently our powers didn't interact well with their power sharing arrangement. I'd heard that the Yangban were tortured whenever they made mistakes, and that they were given numbers and not names. The fact that Shucai had a name spoke to the importance he must have for the CUI.

The fact that they were here at all suggested that the Chinese were desperate. They generally didn't like the Protectorate at all; they thought they were corrupt and the source of many problems in the world. They had always claimed that they would be the ones to end the Endbringer threat. It must gall them that an American did it first.

"Sparta," I said shortly. "Like I said."

"I will call you Kakkarot." he said.

"Why?"

"Vegetable names are traditional among our kind," he said. "My own name means vegetables in my own tongue. I have named you carrot."

"Carrot?"

"Because you are long and thin and have no curves," he said. "And you are yellow."

I stared at him. He was insulting me when he was asking for my help? What the hell was wrong with him?

"And you're short with funny looking hair," I said. "But I'm not calling you a troll doll, now am I?"

One of the younger ones in the back smirked slightly, although he quickly schooled his expression. None of the others seemed to get the reference.

"The question you should be asking yourself is why I should help you at all?" I said. "Because right now I don't see any reason that I should help someone who has insulted me."

"Your government has made promises," he said stiffly. "And your employer, the Protectorate as well."

"This is America," I said. "Which means that I don't have to do what my government says. Even if I supposedly did have to follow their orders, who could make me?"

"You do not seem so much stronger than I," he said.

I was a little more than twice as strong as he was, even in my base form. If he wanted to posture to save face in front of the others, I wouldn't argue with him.

However, I wasn't going to let him step on me.

Power flared within me, and the world suddenly turned yellow. My mind cleared of everything except anger, and I smirked at him.

"Don't I?"

He took a step back, and all of the others gasped and looked as though they wanted to run away. They didn't seem to have the bravery that they should; they reminded me a little of whipped dogs. They'd been abused so often that they were afraid of their own shadows.

This one was braver than that. He'd seen combat; probably a lot of it.

Given the nature of Chinese society these days, he probably preexisted whatever breeding program the CUI had tried to replicate his power, which was why he was so much braver than they.

Already I could see part of the reason they were failing. Part of what we are is our love of battle. The belief that you would win, and even if you didn't that you would come back and get stronger, that joy in battle was all part of what made us who we were. I had it, dad had it, but the ones standing behind him did not.

The Chinese had been so concerned about stamping out individuality that they'd wiped out the very qualities needed to make the warriors that they wanted.

"You are powerful," he conceded finally. "But you cannot fight the battle to come alone. No one can. We must fight like wolves, or we will fall like coyotes."

Fight like wolves; he'd apparently talked to Alexandria.

I glanced at Armsmaster. I wasn't sure whether he knew about Scion; I had the impression that Alexandria and the others didn't want too many people knowing about him for fear that he'd detect us getting ready for him and attack before we were ready.

"Maybe that's something that we could talk about somewhere else," I said. I let my new form drop away.

"The teaching need not go all one way," he said. "We have been teaching each other techniques for a thousand years, refining knowledge that was acquired from our ancestor and making it our own."

"New techniques?" I asked. "I've got a couple of my own, but I'd love to know what you know."

"Perhaps you aren't the uncultured barbarian that our government thinks you are."

Had he been told unflattering things about me? Was that why he had been so hostile, or was it jealousy? It made sense that he'd resent me if he'd known whatever my golden form was and he'd been trying to get it for years.

He should have shown up for a few more Endbringer fights. It would have worked wonders.

"I probably am," I said. "But I'm the barbarian the world needs right now."

Armsmaster had been looking more and more alarmed during the whole conversation, but now he was looking relieved. Had he really thought we were going to come to blows right on top of the Rig? That would have destroyed the whole structure.

I'd have hit Shucai out into the ocean and we'd have fought there. I'd learned my lesson about collateral damage, and I'd have made sure that no one got hurt.

"Perhaps we can be friends Kakkarot," he said. "And together we will slay the giant."

"Lung has not warranted a kill order," Armsmaster said hurriedly, still clueless.

I sneered at him. "Please. Lung hasn't been a threat to me for weeks."

Shucai chuckled, and the five teenagers behind him all gave fake, nervous laughs.

"Perhaps there are traces of a true Saiyen inside you," he said.

"What's a Saiyen again?" I asked.

He stopped and frowned. "You have much to learn."

"I'm still a super whatever, shrimp," I said. I grinned at him. "Of course, I had pretty decent training."

Garrett and Leet had made their way back from Hawaii with Dad. Apparently huddling in the Endbringer shelter with a bunch of smelly nerds had been less exciting than they'd hoped.

Maybe Garrett could do something with the teenage Saiyens. I'd have my hands full with Shucai.

With some luck, he might even provide me with a decent fight, as long as I didn't go super.


	56. Rotten apple

"I don't like him," Sophia said.

We were waiting outside a conference room where the Chinese jerk was having his meeting with Piggot and some of the other bigwigs. I hoped they had an easier time of it than we had, but somehow I doubted it. Assault was with us, apparently to help keep us calm in the aftermath of dealing with someone who was this irritating.

I forced myself not to scowl. "Piggot says we have to put up with him, at least for a while. He's an asshole, but he's _strong_."

He wasn't as strong as Alexandria, but he was close.

"If he's that strong, why haven't I heard of him?" she asked. "People at your level are known worldwide."

She was right. Why _hadn't_ I heard of him? Either he'd been avoiding Endbringer fights, which I couldn't see someone with our power set doing, or he'd been sandbagging, in which case people would have died because he didn't go out.

Actually, I doubted that he could get this strong without fighting the Endbringers at least a few times.

"My guess is that the Chinese were holding him back as a secret weapon," Assault said. "I've been putting some feelers out, and they tell me that this guy is older than he looks."

"I've got no idea how old he is," I said. "All you old people look the same to me."

"I'm still in my twenties!" he protested in mock outrage. "This guy, though, has to be at least sixty."

"Why?"

He didn't look a day over forty. Was it because he was Asian, and I had trouble seeing age on Asian faces, or was it something about our family genetics. If so, then why didn't Dad look younger? Had he somehow found a way to use Ki to stay young? If he had I wanted to know it, for Dad's sake at the very least.

"They say he fought in the Vietnam war, and then the Sino-Vietnamese conflicts. He fought Somali pirates, back before shipping crashed enough to starve them out. He's fought in conflicts all over Africa for a variety of warlords, and he's been fighting pretty much continuously for the past forty years. He's probably killed more parahumans than anybody."

"So why bother with the CUI?" I asked. "He was there before they took over, and he's strong enough now to go wherever he wants."

"He's related to the Emperor; it's a distant relation, but close enough to keep him loyal. Besides, they treat him like a prince, unlike all of the others."

He acted like royalty, sure enough. Still, he couldn't be that close to royalty if they'd been letting him out to risk his life. Chinese royalty ruled from behind.

"The other ones look scared of their own shadow," Shadowstalker snorted dismissively.

"They've all got the same potential I have. It's not smart to dismiss them," I said. "Even if they do seem kind of skittish. It's a little creepy, really."

What kind of torture had they gone through to break the kind of spirit our family had? And did the Chinese know what kind of mistake that was?

"How is that, anyway? It's weird that you and your dad have the exact same power, but now all these Chinese guys show up..." Sophia said. "It's got to raise some questions."

"They claim that we aren't parahumans, not in the same way everybody else is. With us, it's all in the family. It's just that we can only get as strong as the people we fight, and before Scion..."

Admitting it to Sophia and Assault wasn't a big deal. Those questions had to have been raised by the United States government when the Chinese had begun negotiations. It was rare for parahumans to have exactly the same power set. Even second triggers usually had variations of the parent powers.

For me and Dad and six other people to have exactly the same powers, and to have never even met each other defied all belief. There were going to be questions, unless the Chinese had already answered them. In any case, Alexandria and crew already knew all about it.

"There wasn't anybody strong enough to make them really strong?" she asked.

I nodded.

"He may be the prince of all assholes, but I'm guessing that he knows a lot more about fighting than I do," I said. "This training thing isn't going to go all one way. Being able to spar with someone I won't have to hold back with will be valuable all on its own."

"Alexandria not enough for you?" she asked.

"Alexandria is busy," I said. "She's got better things to do than spend all the time fighting with me. Besides, if I actually injure her, I don't think she'd be able to heal."

I'd been close enough to her to see her artificial eye a time or two. The only reason she'd have that was if people like Panacea couldn't heal her.

"This, guy, though, I think I'll enjoy punching."

I was growing more and more enthusiastic about the idea the more I thought about it. It might finally be time to start leveling Dad up as well when we trained the younger ones. If I could create a team of Saiyans we might have a chance against Scion, but only if they got stronger fast.

There was an uncomfortable feeling in the depths of my gut. If Scion was the source of all powers except that of Saiyens, that meant that he was likely the source of the Endbringers as well. Killing Behemoth might be just the trigger that was needed to set him off.

"Calling me carrot," I said, scowling. "Carrots aren't even yellow."

"Asian carrots are," Assault said. "He even changed the name so you'd understand it, instead of something Chinese."

"He didn't change Dad's name," I said. "Called him Boluo."

Sophia tapped at her phone. "Says here that means pineapple."

"A pineapple isn't a vegetable," I said. "It's a fruit."

"He's saying your father isn't a proper vegetable," Assault said. "Not worthy of an actual name. Also, pineapple head is an insult... it means someone who has a big head who is stupid."

"My Dad isn't stupid!" I said, tensing up. "He just didn't run around killing people for the last forty years."

Not that he couldn't have if he'd wanted to. He could have killed a lot of people. The fact that he'd chosen a family over his biological imperative actually spoke well of his intelligence and his self control.

It was bad enough that Shucai was insulting me; I'd had worse from others with more justification. But insulting my Dad?

"Isn't your dad like forty five?" Sophia asked. "He'd have had to be a stone cold killer to have started at five."

"I come from a tough family," I said. "Fighting lions and tigers and bears and all that."

She thought I was joking; I could tell. Everyone probably would. People were used to thinking of parahumans as a recent phenomenon, and New Wave nonewithstanding, an individual one. Families of parahumans were rare; generations old families were impossible.

Parahumans were driven to conflict, which probably meant that our families' aggression seemed to fit right in. Still, the utter ridiculousness of deliberately fighting bears would have been ludicrous to most people.

The door slammed open and Piggot stepped out. Her face was flushed and she looked as angry as I'd ever seen her. Her hands were actually clenched, even though she was clearly working hard to keep her face as expressionless as possible.

"The Protectorate will be setting Mr. Shucai up in a deluxe hotel," she said. "And your training will start tomorrow."

I grimaced. So I would be working with him. While the part of me that enjoyed getting stronger was chomping at the bit, the other part of me, that didn't like being insulted wanted anything except that. Maybe this was an opportunity, though.

She glanced back into the room behind her, then leaned forward. "And don't go easy on him."

Given what we were, that would only make him stronger. Still, I had no intention of going easy on anyone. If he thought we were inferior just because we were westerners, I'd have to show him differently.

He was better than me.

I was still twice as strong and fast as he was, which helped a lot, but in terms of martial arts skills and techniques, he was much better than I was. He was hitting me hard and throwing me around, and I was having trouble keeping up with him.

Every time I thought I had him, he slipped out of my grasp. He moved like water, and he moved to hit me from unexpected directions; a kick to the back of my head, a foot hooked around the back of my ankle. I couldn't anticipate him, and there were moves he was using that I'd never even seen Garrett use.

It made me wonder if I should be training in a number of different kinds of martial arts. The problem would be finding teachers that I wouldn't absolutely destroy with a moment of inattention. Maybe they could teach me using Leet's avatars.

Obviously Shucai's martial training was effective. I was stronger and faster than he was and he was throwing me around like I was a rag doll.

If we hadn't been out in the middle of the Salar de Uyuni, I had no doubt that we'd have destroyed a city already. The Salar de Uyuni was the largest salt flat in the world, located in Bolivia. It was more than four thousand square miles in size, which left plenty of room for Shucai to throw me over the horizon without my hitting anything.

We weren't destroying anything or hurting anyone, which was good. We weren't even disturbing the neighbors, which was another advantage.

The only other good part was that I was learning fast. Although I couldn't anticipate his moves, I was fast enough that I could actually see what he was doing, and I was working out whatever counters I could. Sometimes they worked and sometimes they didn't; I was keeping whatever worked.

I suspected that I was learning more in a single hour with him than I would have learned from an ordinary trainer in a week. Give me a year with him and I'd be a genuine combat monster.

Right now, all I could be considered was a gifted amateur. After all, despite the intense training I'd gotten, I'd only been fighting for three or four months.

"This is the best the Protectorate has to offer?" he spat. "Perhaps I was too quick to call you Kakkarot. I shall call you Lan Pingguo instead."

He didn't bother to explain, although I knew it was an insult. He hadn't bothered translating it into a vaguely English sounding word, either. Had doing so before been a sign of respect?

"What does that even mean?" I gritted out as he punched me in the stomach.

"Rotten apple," he said. "One that is soft and mushy and smells bad."

I hadn't been using my transformation, first because we needed a baseline for our combat abilities, and second because my transformation was multiplicative, which meant that any gains in strength in my base form grew my transformed power by that much more.

Training would need to be in base form, at least the part of it that involved getting stronger.

Dad and the others were watching us with wide eyes. From there perspective, it was probably hard to follow us. While I was twice as strong as Alexandria in this form, I was much more than twice as fast. She was a thinker, and her body was more durable than mine in this form, but to me it was like she was sitting still.

That was the real reason that I didn't want to train with her anymore. With everyone else I was so strong that I had to treat them like wet tissues. With her I had to slow down to an excruciating degree. With this man, neither thing was true.

In my super Saiyen form, all of his advantages in skill and experience would mean nothing. I saw the suspicion that this was true in his eyes, but his pride wouldn't allow him to say it.

"That's it!" I said. I scowled at him. "You think I'm weak? Let's see."

A moment later I was in my transformed form, and as I'd suspected everything was different. Suddenly a battle that had been incredibly difficult had become incredibly easy. I was fast enough now that his skill didn't make much of a difference. He slipped out of my grasp a couple of times, but he was moving so slowly that it was child's play to batter him around.

I would have felt bad, but after he'd been such a jerk earlier, there was a kind of grim satisfaction in giving him a beating. Every time my fists hit him, every time he went flying over the horizon only for me to already be at the other end and hitting him back felt like a vindication.

It was like fighting a three year old child; an evil three year old child. There wasn't a lot of satisfaction in terms of an equal fight, but there was a lot of pleasure in dominating him. Was this how the Endbringers felt when they were fighting people?.

"All these years of fighting," I said. "Killing people, trying to get stronger. And in the end a little girl beat you. How pathetic."

I slapped his hand away as he tried for a move that I'd seen him make before. Previously it had been so fast as to seem almost invisible. Now,.it felt like it was moving through molasses.

"The pride of the CUI, supposedly the world's supersoldiers, and those are the best you can manage?"

He scowled. "You don't know what you are talking about."

"You insult me," I said. "Which is fine, because I'm better than you. It's probably easier for me to learn to fight better than it is for you to get stronger. After all, who are you going to pit yourself against? The Endbringers?"

"Yes," he gritted out. "I have been to Endbringer fights."

"And yet I've never heard of you. Where's the glory that is supposed to come with being as strong as you are. You aren't even as strong as Alexandria."

He began pulling in Ki.

We were in the Salt flats of Utah; there was nothing for miles around, so there wasn't much for us to destroy other than a few folding chairs and a tent that was there to protect Dad and the younger Chinese from the sun. Alexandria was there to observe for some reason.

Was she there to keep us from killing each other? I doubted that she'd be able to do so.

I dodged the first of his blasts, and then the second and the third.

He did something odd then; his Ki flattened and turned into a disk. It launched toward me, and I was so astonished that I almost didn't get out of the way in time. It sheered off the skin on the side of my arm, and I gritted my teeth from the pain.

That was a powerful attack, and it was coming for me again, like a boomerang. He was controlling it with his will, much like I'd controlled my own Ki blasts when I'd sent them around the world to hit Behemoth.

"You may have an advantage in power, but your people have forgotten more about using Ki than they have ever learned. We have been refining our powers for a thousand years, and we have learned many new and unique ways to use it."

I frowned, gathering my Ki. Now that I saw what he was doing it was obvious; it was a little like physics. Take all of the force of a blow, and put it into a small point, or an edge, and it would cut through things much more effectively.

I created a plane of Ki of my own, and a moment later mine intersected his. They both exploded with a blast of light, but mine remained afterwards. Power had its privileges.

"Thing about me is that I'm a fast learner. If you really want to catch up with me you'll have to learn to keep up."

Blood was running from his lip and his eye was starting to swell. I wasn't going to offer Panacea's services; although if he was hurt badly enough time in the Bacta tank might be helpful.

I dropped the transformation, returning to my base form. "But if you want to learn what I already know, you are going to have to respect me."

"Perhaps I should call you Xian Ren Zhang," he said.

"And what does that mean?" I asked. He still wasn't using English nicknames, and he had to know it was annoying.

"It's a plant with many spines on the outside, but it is filled with water, like a little crying baby."

"A cactus?" I asked.

Golden light flared around me, and I started beating him again.


	57. Plans

It almost seemed like Shucai hoped that my beating him would be enough alone to bring him up to Super Saiyen, but it didn't happen. Instead I eventually grew tired of it, and I decided to turn to the others.

Only one of them spoke anything but Mandarin. I wasn't sure whether this was Chinese provincialism, or if it was a way to keep them from escaping to other countries. A language barrier only made it harder for them to defect, after all.

The one who spoke our language was named Wong Bok, which I was informed meant Chinese Cabbage. I wasn't even sure how that was different from regular cabbage, but it didn't matter. He wouldn't look me in the eye, and none of the others would either.

In contrast to Shucai's casual arrogance, they were deferential to the point that it made me uncomfortable. It was wrong for them to be this beaten down, especially if they were going to get strong enough to help with the Endbringers and Scion eventually.

A plan was forming in my mind. Shucai obviously hadn't done a good job of training these people; it was therefore my duty to do it. Alexandria had given her tacit seal of approval for the venture after all by staying to observe us fighting, and by arranging a venue to do it in another country.

"Why don't they have your drive?" I asked Shucai shortly afterward. "What's wrong with them?"

He sneered. "I don't speak against my government, but it should not matter. If they were true Saiyens it would not matter what had been done to them."

"You've been told about Scion, haven't you?" I asked. "Or is that a state secret no one has mentioned to you."

"No," he said. "What about him?"

"He's the source of all powers," I said. "Except ours."

"That's interesting," he said slowly. "I'm not sure why I should care."

"He's an alien who plans to destroy not just this Earth, but all of the Earths everywhere," I said. "And the body that we see isn't even his real body. It's a projection. His real self is elsewhere."

He was silent for a long moment. "Are you certain of this?"

I glanced at Alexandria. "There are people in our government who have been working on this for more than twenty years. Precogs can't follow Scion; he's a blind spot, probably because he's the one who handed them their powers. But they can see the end of the world, and they all say it happens between eighteen months to twenty years from now."

Not that it wasn't possible for someone to set it off earlier.

He looked grim. "There have been similar results from our precogs as well, although no one was able to determine the cause. Why did your people not share this?"

"Who knows what ears Scion has?" I asked. "If he becomes aware that we know, then it would be most prudent of him to start the end earlier, maybe today."

"Then why are you telling me?" he asked.

"Alexandria, Eidolon, Legend, they are all strong, but they are as strong as they are ever going to get," I said. "And they aren't strong enough to stop an Endbringer, much less Scion."

"And I have the potential to be of use to you, even if it is just as cannon fodder," he said.

I smirked, then nodded. "Even so."

"Why should I let you sacrifice me on a mad scheme?"

"Because you'll die anyway when he destroys the world," I said. "And you strike me as the type who would rather die fighting, than die on his knees like some kind of sheep."

"As strong as I am now I barely beat Behemoth," I continued. "Even at your level you should be able to feel how much stronger Scion is."

He nodded grudgingly.

"That means that it's going to take more than one of us to fight him; maybe all of us," I said. "And for that to happen we need to get them and my Dad up to snuff as soon as possible."

"Your father is old and weak," he said. "We aren't meant to age so quickly."

"He chose a path of peace for his family," I said. "That doesn't mean that he doesn't like to fight. What does any of that have to do with his being old?"

"In the old days Saiyens aged slowly throughout their lives so they could fight longer," he said. "Perhaps because Ki in their bodies interacted with their unique metabolism. Our scientists have not found a reason. But those who chose not to develop their talents wear the signs of their shame in their faces and bodies."

"He's braver than your group," I said. "He hasn't had the spirit beaten out of him. And if he was really such a grass eater, could he have raised someone like me?"

"I still haven't decided about you," he said, grudgingly. "Clearly you have strength but no skill."

"I can get more skilled easier than you can get stronger," I said. "Since the only way that's going to happen is if you find stronger opponents to fight... and Endbringers are all that are left."

"Two in all the world," he said.

"Oh no," I said. "There are nineteen more. Can't you feel them?"

He shook his head, staring at me.

"They are resting deep in the earth, waiting," I said. "I suspect that sooner or later the next one will awake, especially since I have killed Behemoth. It's possible that some of them may have powers that we cannot counter."

"But you want to use them to get stronger," he said.

I nodded. "There's a risk to that. If Scion gets wind of the fact that someone is destroying Endbringers, then its likely that he will start the end of the world early."

"So we either kill them only as they come, or we go after them as quickly as we can," he said. He stared at me. "You do not think small. Perhaps one day I shall call you Wasabi."

He didn't bother to explain his reasoning, although he acted like he thought it would be an honor. I'd thought Wasabi was more of a Japanese thing, but he'd apparently been a world traveler.

"Just call me Sparta," I said. "Or Girl if you can't manage that. I don't give a damn about your naming conventions. All I need is your cooperation."

"Hmph," he said. "I can see the need, but you will never get those fools strong enough to be useful as anything other than bodies for the pyre."

"We'll have to if we want to kill Scion," I said quietly. "It will take all of us to beat him."

"What makes you think that you can kill a monster who is that powerful. Even your transformed self is a pale reflection of him."

"Who says that this is all we can ever be?" I asked. "It multiplies our power, and that means that as I get stronger in my base form, I get much stronger in this form."

"So you would try fighting Endbringers in your base form then?" he asked. "That sounds risky. Sooner or later you will die."

"Not if I have people who are strong enough who have my back," I said. "We've got nineteen chances to get stronger, plus whatever we can manage through regular training. I have a feeling that we don't have decades to do it either."

"And you expect me to go along with this madness?"

"Not if you want to stay like you are, always stagnant," I said. "I don't think you can learn to become a Super Saiyen just by training. I think you have to be facing real danger."

He snorted. "When aren't we?"

"Less now than in the past, I'd bet," I said. "When was the last time you were really afraid for your life? At your power level it's probably hard to find any challenges."

He nodded after a moment. At least he was listening.

"I don't know what kind of training they've been giving your people, but it obviously isn't working. They have no pride, and they are too afraid to be good warriors."

He was silent, apparently unwilling to speak against his own country, but also unwilling to say anything good about what had been done.

"I think it's like healing a bone that has grown back crooked," I said.

"You have to break it again," he said.

I nodded. "And then build it back up again. We'll have my trainer work with us to come up with something."

"This has nothing to do with our goal of becoming a Super Saiyen," he said.

"Your goal," I said. "But ultimately if Scion destroys all the worlds, the CUI won't survive either. This is something that we are going to have to do."

He frowned.

I wondered whether he would say that he had to consult his superiors, or whether he planned to make his own decision.

He must have seen my question on my face, because he grimaced and said, "I am my own man. I will make my own decisions."

"Well, in this case, what's good for the world is also going to be what makes you stronger," I said.

He was silent for a long moment. "Fine. I will help you, even if this is foolishness."

* * *

"You want to what?" Piggot asked.

"Attack the Endbringers before they attack us," I said.

"Are you insane?" she asked.

Alexandria was siting beside her, as was Legend and Eidolon. They looked flabbergasted at my suggestion, even though it had to be the next logical step in my suggestion.

"It's the only way I'm going to get stronger," I said. "And it'd the only way Shucai is going to get what our government promised."

"You don't think that might trigger retaliation?" Alexandria said mildly. There was a glint in her eye that suggested that she was talking about Scion, even if Piggot and the other capes around the table thought we were talking about the Endbringers.

"It might," I admitted. "But there are nineteen more Endbringers, and I've got a feeling that now they know that we are capable of killing them that they won't be going as easily on us as they have been."

"Going easy?" Legend asked.

"They'd been sandbagging," I said. "I could tell during my battle with Behemoth. He upped his energy levels toward the end when he realized I was able to hurt him."

"That's not proof that he was sandbagging."

"If they were playing it straight, would they even need to give us a chance to fight them?" I asked.

"What do you mean?" Piggot asked.

"Leviathan could stay underwater and drown entire cities from the bottom of the ocean. Who could stop him?" I asked. "The Simurgh could fly over cities, scream and be back in the upper atmosphere before we even had to respond. Behemoth could have created earthquakes and volcanic eruptions that would kill far more people than he does. Why haven't they?"

"Because they are sadistic bastards," Eidolon gritted.

"Maybe," I said. "Or maybe they've got long term plans we don't know about. I think that now they know we are an actual threat they'll get a lot more dangerous. I don't think the world could take something like that."

"This plan is foolhardy and irresponsible," Piggot said. "What if you wake all seventeen of the ones who are sleeping? If they attack all at the same time, it would be end of everything."

"What if we attack them when they are sleeping?" I countered. "Kill them before they have a chance to harm a single civilian."

As tough as they were, there was no way we'd be able to kill them before they attacked us. However, attacking them one at a time when they were unprepared seemed to me to be the best idea.

"It's a bad idea," Alexandria said. "The odds are that the New Endbringers will have esoteric new attacks, and without experience in dealing with them, you will die. Considering that you are the only one to have ever defeated an Endbringer, that makes you humanity's only hope."

"There's still Shucai," I said. "He has the same potential I had, and he is close enough in power that he might be able to accomplish it."

"The other issue is that we have no proof that the other Endbringers will even wake up," Alexandria said. "They have remained asleep all of this time; perhaps something went wrong with whatever mechanism that was to have awakened them."

"Then what about the existing Endbringers," I asked. "If the others don't wake up, then we can end the threat right now."

"We don't want you in the same hemisphere as the Simurgh," Alexandria said. "Because if she gets into your head, you'd be more deadly than an entire city of people she's influenced."

"What about Leviathan?" I asked. "He's next in the rotation."

"You're going to fight him in the middle of the ocean?" Piggot asked. "That's where he's the very strongest. The last that I heard you still need to breathe."

"So what?" I asked. "We just wait for them to start attacking people and killing cities?"

"I don't see that we have much of a choice," Piggot said. "Unlike you, the rest of us can't withstand an Endbringer attack. We can't withstand it if they divert one of your attacks either."

My face flushed. This was the first time anyone had said anything to me about the deaths I had caused.

"You killed twelve thousand people the last time you had a good idea," Piggot said. "Are you ready to increase that number tenfold? A hundred fold? If you wake all of the Endbringers, if might be a thousandfold."

I grimaced. "I've learned my lesson from that. I'll be more careful."

"Will you?" Piggot asked. "Because no Endbringer is alike, and the things they do will be completely different. There are people here who have been fighting Endbringers for twenty years. They have more tactical knowledge than you can even imagine."

"And what good did it do them?" I asked.

"It kept people alive," she said. Piggot's face was flushed. "Every name on an Endbringer wall is someone who gave their lives so that other people might live longer, even if it was only a little while longer."

"And in the end, it was all a farce," I said. "The Endbringers were playing you all along, fighting just hard enough to keep you playing."

"What do you mean by that?" Eidolon asked, his voice growing dangerously quiet.

"Why do you think they pulled back, really?" I asked. "Because if they showed you their real power, nobody would ever show up for Endbringer fights. We'd just abandon whatever cities they were attacking as a lost cause."

"We wouldn't," Legend said.

"We do with the Simurgh's cities," I said. "We wall them up and we forget about them. Why would the other cities be any different? We give up on hundreds of thousand or even millions of people because we don't know how to do anything else."

"They are a danger to everyone around them," Alexandria said. "The quarantines are for the good of the world."

"You think the world wouldn't make peace with giving up on four cities a year?" I asked. "There's more than four thousand cities in the world with populations over a hundred and fifty thousand. People would just scatter to the countryside and hope that the cities kept the Endbringer's attention."

"That may be true, but what happens when it's your town that gets targeted because a fourteen year old was obsessed with getting stronger," Piggot said. "You may be considered a hero now, but you can bet that public opinion would turn on you in an instant."

"You think I care anything about public opinion?" I asked. "Why would I give a damn about what anybody thinks."

"Because there are people that you know, and at least mildly care about who will be affected," Piggot said. "You think Uber or Leet, Shadowstalker or Liliander can take a bullet to the head? The things you are proposing might turn ordinary people against all parahumans, which is exactly what the PRT was designed to stop."

"You don't even like parahumans," I said. I immediately wished I hadn't said it.

Piggot flushed an even deeper red. "There's some truth to that, and you know why? Because most of them think they are better than everyone else. Even the heroes tend to think that they don't have to follow the same rules that the rest of humanity has agreed to abide by. They believe they are above the law."

"You scare me more than the Endbringers do," she continued. "Because they can actually be predicted. They destroy on a schedule, and once they've done what they've come to do, they leave. You on the other hand are as strong as any of them, and you are a fourteen year old girl. It's worse than just giving a fourteen year old with no training, it's like giving them a nuclear weapon."

If she knew what I was actually capable of, her hair would turn white. That was the thought that helped me to stay calm.

"Why don't you try to be a normal kid for a while," she said. "Arcadia is opening on Monday, and you'll be expected to show up."

The school had been closed in the wake of the attack by the Slaughterhouse Nine. A lot of the population had left, but since they'd learned that the Endslayer lived here, a lot of people had been coming back. Presumably they were betting that I would be able to protect them better than the rest of the Protectorate. It didn't seem to occur to anyone that I would attract trouble.

"Fine," I said. "I'll go to school, and I'll keep training the Chinese. Is there anything else that you want?"

"I just want you to think before you do anything foolish," Piggot said. "Because as powerful as you are, mistakes mean a lot more than when you were barely stronger than human. Back then you might have crushed a skull or two. Now? You could destroy a city."


	58. Salsa

"This is bullshit," Sophia said. She scowled.

It was the first day of school since everything had shut down after the Slaughterhouse had attacked. We were walking to school together; Piggot had suggested that I make sure that Sophia get to her classes, as though she was afraid she would run away.

"What? School?" I asked. "You could always try homeschooling. Piggot won't let me do it."

"Yeah, I heard about that. She thinks that you'll get off by yourself or spend too much time with that Chinese asshole, and you'll forget what it's like to be normal."

"Well, I don't really get what she means," I said. "It's just... all of this doesn't seem very important. Not when you know the world is going to end."

"Yeah... and what do they think you'll do with all this... become an accountant? If you wanted to get rich, you'd be rich."

"I'm not going to turn villain, Sophia."

"Hey, I'm not going to judge. If you pay me well enough I'd be happy to be your number one henchwoman."

I scowled at her. "I'm serious."

"Who says you have to?" she said. "You could make a living moving things. You know what it costs to get a tunnel dug for a subway or an underground road? You could do it in a second."

She made a finger gun motion.

"I'd blow up half the continent," I said.

"So dial it back," she said. "You don't always have to be bustin planets, or whatever your next step is."

Arcadia came into view. At one time it had probably been beautiful, but for now it still had some windows that were boarded up. Half of them had been replaced, supposedly with special bulletproof materials that someone with Shatterbird's powers wouldn't be able to affect.

Considering that Shatterbird was dead, it was a little like closing the barn after the horse had died, but whatever. There were a lot of guards around, carrying rifles.

"If Sparta is supposed to be so scary, why all the guns?" I asked.

"About a quarter of the chuckleheads in the Empire managed to survive," Sophia said. "Not any of the big names, but some of the sub lieutenants. They've been forming little gangs of ten or twenty guys, and they like to kidnap people, trying to get the money to fight back against the ABB."

The AB had been slowly but surely taking over territory. They'd been doing it quietly enough that the Protectorate didn't feel like they had to go after them, but Piggot had talked about going after them.

Considering that I could sense the exact location of Lung and Oni Lee at this very moment, there wasn't much of a reason not to, except that Piggot was afraid that Lung was the only thing keeping the city from exploding into violence.

He'd formed the ABB from dozens of mini-gangs, and Piggot thought they would all collapse into fighting if he was captured or killed. She thought that a lot of people would be caught in the crossfire.

As strong as I was, I couldn't be everywhere. I couldn't stop every drive-by shooting, save every kidnapped kid, go after every criminal. Part of the problem was that while parahumans glowed brightly to my Ki sense, ordinary people blended together. Also, unless I'd met someone, I couldn't identify them by Ki signature alone.

I wasn't a detective, and I had no way of solving crimes, not really.

It still bothered me to let Lung alone; while he was a lot less aggressive than the Empire had been, and he wasn't selling drugs to kids like the Merchants had, he was still holding women in brothels. He still kidnapped and killed. By no stretch of the imagination was he innocent.

I was tempted to have a little talk with him; tell him that if he would stop the brothels then I would overlook the illegal gambling operations and shady real estate deals. However, Piggot would likely have a stroke if I did, especially since I didn't have the authority to make that kind of promise.

We couldn't look like we were making deals with criminals, even though the Protectorate did it all the time. They just made sure the details weren't written down.

As we reached the gate a line of students was forming. We were quiet as we waited our turn.

"Have your school IDs ready," the guard was calling out. "No one gets inside without the proper Identification."

There was a metal detector at the gate.

"All the new kids coming in have got them spooked," Sophia muttered, staring at the gate. "Afraid they're going to taint their little lily white country club."

A lot of people had left Brockton Bay in the exodus after the Slaughterhouse attack. Even more were coming back now that Sparta was known as the Endslayer. Apparently rich people liked the idea of living in the shadow of someone who could go toe to toe with an Endbringer.

Enough people were coming in that it was actually creating a small housing boom in the nicer parts of town. There were swarms of new students coming in to Immaculata and Arcadia, which meant that slipping me and Sophia in with the others wasn't going to be a problem.

"Is that why you didn't want to come here in the first place?" I asked Sophia. "You think these people are all racists? So instead you go to a school where half the kids were in the Empire?"

"I could do more good there," she muttered. "Kicking ass and taking names. Here they've got people looking over your shoulder all the time... including all the other suck ups."

She meant the other Wards. I'd never really understood her animosity toward the others, unless it was because they didn't fit neatly into one of the boxes she put people in. She liked to think of people as being either strong or weak, but the wards didn't fit neatly into either category.

Clockblocker had a power that could stop an Endbringer, if only temporarily, but he was an idiot. Vista was just as powerful, and potentially even more useful, but she was a child. Kid Wynn wasn't very impressive in person, but he was a tinker, and tinkers are always some of the most dangerous parahumans.

All of them were powerful, yet they had personal flaws that made them seem weak. It probably confused her, and when she got confused she tended to get mean.

"Still, at least it's just a half day of school. You could have had a lot more time for extracurriculars," I said.

I meant her vigilante career.

She shot me a sharp glance, as though to ask if I was stupid.

"During the day?" she shook her head. "Besides, the Arcadia track team is crap. The one thing the Winslow kids were good at was running."

"Sports isn't everything," I said.

I was aware that there were people ahead and behind us, so we weren't exactly free to talk directly. Still, if she'd gone to Arcadia my life at Winslow would have been a lot easier.

"When you are good at something, you should stick to it," she said.

Right.

I handed my ID to the security guard to my left, and Sophia handed hers to the one on the right. We passed through the metal detectors. A copy of my Sparta costume had already been delivered to the school should we need to suit up.

"You need to speak to Principal Howell," the guard said, once he'd looked at my ID. "There are some issues with your transfer."

I looked at him warily, then nodded.

Sophia was following me. "Quimby is new to the job. The last Principal was killed when Shatterbird did her thing. She was at the aquarium... there was a thing with a shark."

I glanced at her, uncertain whether she was joking or not. It seemed like a joke, but her face was totally serious.

Whatever. It didn't matter.

"I'll bet the Principal is scared of you," Sophia said, smirking.

I shook my head. "She's the principal of a school filled with... people like us. I hardly think she'll be shaking in her boots."

Sophia at least seemed to know the way, and so I followed her. We were escorted to the Principal's office.

As soon as the door closed behind us, the woman behind the desk smiled at me. She was a thin, almost gaunt woman dressed in pink. She reminded me a little of old pictures of Nancy Reagan.

"Miss Hebert, Sophia, it's good to see the both of you," she said. She smiled, and I couldn't see whether she was being sincere or not. Her hands were gripping the back of her chair tightly, though, hard enough that they were turning white."It's an honor to have Sparta at our school."

So she was in on my identity. While I suppose that it was necessary so that I'd be able to leave in emergencies, I wasn't sure how good an idea it was to give the identities of all the Wards to a woman who didn't have any powers and presumably went home to an unguarded house at night.

After all, a determined villain could easily capture her, and with enough torture almost anyone would crack.

Well, not me, but that had been in part because I'd known I was getting stronger and would be free sooner or later. Most people didn't have that kind of hope, and they didn't have that association with pain making them stronger.

It wouldn't matter that much to me, not now. Dad was strong and he was going to get stronger soon as I put him through the same training I put the others. I didn't have anyone else I had to worry about, not that weren't parahumans in their own right.

Was that part of the reason Piggot wanted me to come back to school? I didn't have a lot of ties to regular humans. Normal people followed social norms because there were consequences; either legal or social.

There were things that weren't illegal that would cause people to avoid you, like having a strong body odor, or belching all the time.

I was strong enough now that the only hope the Protectorate had of controlling me was by using masters, and they didn't have a lot of those. The ones who could control human beings were a smaller subset of masters in general. Most of them had time limits on their abilities too.

The ones that didn't have time limits were invariably villains, probably because having the ability to control minds without limits caused someone to lose all their perspective. They probably stopped seeing people as really being people.

The Protectorate didn't have many masters, and the ones they did have wouldn't be able to hold me for long. Once they had me, they could try to put me in the Birdcage, but I'd be able to break out easily. Thinks like vacuum or attack drones wouldn't matter much when you could destroy the entire top of the mountain with a single blast.

So their best bet was to make sure that I had as many ties to the human world as possible. If I cared about what happened to ordinary people then I was unlikely to turn villain, to turn against humanity.

After all, other than for my own intellectual advancement, what did I really need an education for?

Millions of dollars would be available to me if I really wanted it. The sales of my action figures had gone through the roof when I'd killed the Slaughterhouse. Now that I'd killed an Endbringer they were having trouble keeping up with the orders.

That money was going to set me up for life, and if I wanted more, all I had to do was to do celebrity endorsements. I could pull treasures from the sea floor, or destroy landmines in countries where those were still a hazard.

I could fly supplies in for charities, or I could do any of a dozen other things with my powers that would make me money.

Sophia was right. I was never going to be an accountant, and I probably wasn't going to be some kind of an investigative journalist with a secret identity. I didn't need glasses anymore anyway.

The Principal was talking, and I realized that I hadn't been listening.

She was going over what was expected of us and the measures used to protect our secret identities. As though I hadn't already heard about those from the other Wards, who were excited to finally see me in school.

Apparently they were intimidated by me, but school was the one place where being able to bench press a continent didn't matter.

Maybe that was why there was a small bit of apprehension deep in the bottom of my stomach. It had been a while since I'd really been afraid of anything; this wasn't something I could punch or blast out of the way.

I was going to have to make nice and try to be popular, or at least try to get along well enough that people didn't try to bully me. Me losing my temper would be the worst thing that could possibly happen.

"What's the policy on bullying?" I interrupted her.

The principal stopped speaking. She looked startled, and for a moment a flash of something undefinable came over her face. "Nobody would try to bully _you._ "

"Not if they knew who I was," I said. "But I've had some experiences before, and I think I'd have a hard time watching someone else being bullied either."

I glanced at Sophia, who had the sense to at least pretend to look mildly embarrassed.

"We have a zero tolerance policy for bullying," she said. "Although we'd really prefer that you bring any issues that do come up with a teacher instead of trying to handle them yourself."

"Oh?" I asked.

"That's true of any student, but considering that you could likely turn them into chunky salsa by sneezing..."

I blinked. Had she actually said that?

She flushed, but forced a smile. "It wouldn't even be fair for you to let someone try to beat you up; they could hurt their hands seriously."

"They'd never lay a hand on me," I said. I frowned. "I could probably make it look like an accident that they missed."

"I doubt it will come to that. Arcadia isn't that kind of school. However, we have had a heavy influx of new students, and so it may take time for them to acclimate to our culture."

"Told you," Sophia muttered.

"I'm not going to destroy half the state because some kid looks at me wrong," I said. "I was bullied for more than a year and I never lashed out."

Sophia looked disgusted that I was bringing that up. It still confused her that I hadn't stood up for myself. It was another thing that didn't fit with her limited world view.

"Just let us handle it, and everything will be fine," she said.

I nodded and forced myself to smile. Those lessons from the publicity department were really starting to come in handy, even if they kept sending me substitutes from other cities on a rotating basis. Apparently they were excited to get to work with me until they really got to know me.

Why that was confused me. I would have thought someone like Sophia would have caused them more problems, but they hadn't had many problems with her. Apparently she fit into one of their boxes a lot better than I did. She was dark and edgy, sure, but there was precedent for that.

I, on the other hand seemed to intimidate people, at least in my alternate identity. It might have been because I'd killed a lot of people, even before Hawaii, and people didn't know how to deal with that in the shape of a fourteen year old girl.

It might be because they were all hyper aware of how easy it would be for me to kill them in turn.

They'd tried a variety of tactics to make me look less threatening; putting me in more girly colors, changing my clothes to be more sexy, trying to make me younger and cuter. I'd refused all of it, only agreeing to change my helmet so that it was open at the top and would show my hair.

As we left the principal's office, I turned to Sophia and said, "She wasn't scared of me."

"She was about to piss herself," Sophia said. "Trust me; I've seen enough gangbangers trying to look big to know the difference."

"Whatever," I said, rolling my eyes. I looked down at the schedule I'd been handed. "At least it's only half a day. It can't be that bad..."

"Taylor? Is that you?"

I froze. Behind me I heard Emma's voice.

Slowly I turned.

She was standing there, and she already had a group of five girls surrounding her, like the queen bee she'd been at Winslow.

"This is Taylor," she said as an aside to the others. "I'm so proud of her."

I blinked. What?

"It must be difficult to take all those hormones, and she's never really going to be a boy, but you can just look at all the muscles and see where she's trying to go with it," Emma said. "Still, I think steroids aren't healthy for someone her age."

I closed my eyes, I'd promised not to blow up the school, and so I needed to keep myself under control.

"She always was more of a boy than a girl anyway. Couldn't grow where it counts, but just kept getting taller and taller."

The other girls were hanging on her every word. I didn't have anything against people who were gender fluid, but Emma obviously thought I did, and she was trying to make me feel less feminine, something that had been a minor problem.

"I think she's going to be the first girl in school who's going to need to shave," she said. "Or maybe she'll try to keep the mustache, who knows?"

Sophia put her hand on my arm.

The girls behind her tittered, and I found myself gritting my teeth.

I could always turn her into chunky salsa later. I just had to get through the day.


	59. Herd

"What are you doing here?" I asked.

My body was tense, and I could feel my heart racing. I hadn't reacted like this to Behemoth, so why was I reacting to a girl who was less dangerous to me, physically at least, than a cockroach?

I concentrated on keeping my breathing slow and the anger out of my voice. Giving her any indication that she was getting to me would be letting her win... and I was done with that. Emma had been a large part of my life for a long time, but now she was barely an afterthought.

She thought she had leverage here, but things were different than they had been at Winslow. There she'd had Madison and Sophia. There she'd had Blackwell wrapped around her fingers. Here I was the one with the principal in my corner, and ultimately the PRT.

That didn't mean that the teachers who weren't in the know wouldn't be on her side, though.

"There was enough damage to Winslow that my Dad pulled some strings," Emma said smugly. "I don't know how _you_ got here. You certainly didn't have the grades."

Sophia was holding onto my arm tightly. I wasn't sure whether it was a warning to me to not murder Emma, or whether it was from some residual friendship feelings she had toward her. It didn't matter; there was nothing she could do to stop me if I should decide to end Emma, and I could see that she knew it.

"I didn't need my Dad to pull any strings," I said. "I actually got in on merits."

It was a lie of course, unless killing an Endbringer counted as merits, but she didn't have to know that.

"Your dad couldn't afford to bribe a teacher with a hamburger," Emma said, sneering. "Your family is so poor that I'm surprised you could afford the school uniform. Maybe you blew a teacher."

Two of the girls around her tittered, sounding a little shocked. Hadn't they heard Emma's brand of vitriol before, or was it reserved solely for me? I'd heard her bullying other kids at Winslow, so she must not have been here very long.

Two of the other girls looked a little uncomfortable, which I thought reflected well on them, even if they didn't try to stop her.

Emma was clearly trying to bait me, like she always had. At Winslow, she'd have pushed and pushed me until I responded, and then she'd find a way to make me the bad guy. I'd been punished over and over for it.

I pulled away from Sophia, my body reflexively changing stances into something Garrett had taught me. A glance at Sophia showed that she was looking worried. Was she worried for me, or for Emma? I didn't know.

Sophia licked her lips nervously and then turned to Emma.

"I told you to quit doing this crap," she said flatly to Emma. "The last time we talked."

Apparently she hadn't told Emma _why_. I actually appreciated that, even if it meant that Emma was here in my face now. If Emma had realized that I was Sparta, there was no way she'd be here now acting like this. Most likely she'd be bragging that she knew me, not realizing that she was making herself a target for whatever gang still wanted to get to me.

They'd kill her instead of kidnapping her too; nobody was going to be dumb enough to kidnap anyone I cared about.

It was about the only real reason I could see for keeping my secret identity now. I was strong enough that I wasn't likely to be at risk from anyone other than Masters, but if I should actually make friends with normal people they would still be vulnerable.

"Getting weak on me?" Emma taunted. "After everything you told me, all the _secrets_ that we shared?"

Apparently Sophia had been less cautious with her own secret identity than she had been with mine. That could be a problem if she was going to use it to blackmail Sophia. We might need to talk to the Protectorate. They'd probably be able to let her know what happens to people who reveal a Ward's secret identity. It usually ended up with a nasty stint in prison.

Sophia froze. "I was screwed up in the head. I shouldn't have told you all the crap that I did... it got you all twisted up inside. It wasn't right of me, and I'm sorry."

"Sorry? You should be sorry," Emma said. She looked like she'd just eaten a cockroach. "You're just pretending to be nice so that you won't go to juvie. I know what you really are."

"I'm not that person anymore," Sophia said. "Not entirely. There will probably always be some of that in me, but I'm trying to be better than I was."

She hadn't changed as much as she thought as far as I was concerned, but the fact that she was even trying was impressive.

"You were already better," Emma said. "That was the whole point. Now you want to be part of the _herd_?"

"You ever hear about Cape Buffalo? They're plant eaters, look like big cows. Don't seem dangerous at all. But piss one off and they will fuck you up. They remember you, and they keep coming; they get revenge. Most importantly, they work together. They killed more big game hunters than any other animal."

"So you want people to call you a cow now?" Emma asked.

"Being part of a herd isn't always bad, not when you've got others to watch your back," Sophia said. She looked down. "I know I haven't always played well with others, and it's still not natural to me, but I'm coming around to the idea."

Emma snorted. "You'll always be a lone wolf... or maybe just a weak little puppy."

Sophia gritted her teeth. "I was screwed up. I've been talking to someone; at first they made me, but I think it's really starting to help. There was some stuff that I went through and I didn't understand how it made me act the way I was."

"You went to a shrink?" Emma stared at Sophia as though she'd never seen her before.

I'd heard that Sophia was in counseling. She'd refused to say anything about what went on in there, other than to say it wasn't a complete waste of time. I still hadn't gone myself, of course, and I hadn't really decided whether I wanted to go or not. It wasn't like they could really make me, not now.

"I think it would help you, too," Sophia said. "Help you deal with what happened."

Emma's face scrunched up with an ugly expression, and she took a step forward as though she wanted to hit Sophia. She had to know that wasn't a good idea. She'd seen what Sophia could do; if she knew Sophia was Shadow Stalker, then maybe she thought she could provoke Sophia into using her power on her.

As if Sophia would need her powers to deal with someone as physically weak as Emma. Truth to be told, even before I'd gained my powers I could have probably beaten Emma, with no training at all. All she had was good hair and a pretty face.

"You said you'd never say anything about that." Emma said.

I had no idea what she was talking about, and at this point I didn't really care.

"I've got secrets, you've got secrets," Sophia said. She sneered. "My secrets aren't going to hurt me as much as they might have once. But they'd hurt my family, and you know what I'd do if people hurt my family."

Emma took a sudden step back and she grimaced.

"Thing is, being a bitch don't make you strong; it just makes people not like you. You think any of these bitches really like you?"

Emma glanced at the girls around her, who were looking away.

"You're still kind of a bitch, Sophia," I said.

She shot me the finger, but she didn't act particularly angry. "Well, Rome wasn't built in a week, or whatever. I'm still a work in progress."

She had seemed to be mellowing a little over the past month or so. Maybe the counseling really was helping. I still wasn't sure I needed it. After all, decisions that would be crazy for someone else made more sense with my power set. Jumping face first into a fire would be an act of idiocy for anyone else. For me it had been an act of... slightly less idiocy.

"You can choose to be weak," Emma said. "Hanging out with gutter trash and turning your back on everything that actually made you cool, but I'm sticking to my guns."

"Hebert's stronger than you think," Sophia said. "I just didn't realize it before."

Emma snorted derisively. "All she was ever able to do was run and tattle like a weak little girl. She never actually _did_ anything to fight back."

She was trying to push my buttons, trying to pull me back into the same old patterns that we'd been going through over and over for more than a year. She thought she had the upper hand, but she had no idea what she was dealing with.

I frowned. Maybe instead of dealing with her like Emma, I should deal with her like the other biggest asshole that I knew; Shucai. What would be the thing that bothered him the most to hear from me?

Ah, right.

I turned to Sophia. "When was the last time we talked about Emma?"

She frowned, unsure where I was going with this, but she answered, "Not long after you left Winslow."

Emma was staring at me, looking uncertain. Did she really think that she was the center of my life, the one thing that I couldn't get out of my head? There had been a time when that was true, but I had bigger things to worry about now. When you are trying to save the world, a little bullying starts to seem insignificant.

Not that I intended to ever forgive her.

"Do you know I haven't thought about her in all that time? She actually thinks she means anything to me." I snickered.

Emma flushed; apparently that jab had hit home. "You shouldn't have come here, Taylor. Nobody wants you here."

"Sophia does," I said. "Didn't she used to be your best friend? Oh wait, that was me..."

I stared at the girls surrounding her. "Think about that for a bit. If she'll treat her ex-best friend like this, what is she going to do to you the minute you do something she doesn't like?"

"I want her here," I heard a voice say from behind me. It was Dennis; normally he was really quiet around me and didn't make the same terrible jokes he made with everyone else. "Hi Taylor."

"Me too," I heard from behind Emma. It was Amy Dallon. She looked a little better than she had the last time I'd seen her, although that didn't take much considering we'd just been in the aftermath of an Endbringer battle.

Dean Stansfield was escorting a teacher, pointing at us. I tensed. He knew who I was, but old habits died hard. I couldn't help but think that he was telling the man that I was at fault.

The teacher strode toward us. "Miss Hebert, Miss Barnes, I think it is time we speak to the Principal."

I felt myself tensing. Dean was staring at me, and it took me a moment to remember that he could sense emotions. Had he really been afraid that I was going to go off? Did people really have to treat me with kid gloves.

Had the Protectorate asked them to keep an eye on me? I had a feeling in my gut that said they had.

Still, the look on Emma's face at the thought that people might actually be on my side was strangely satisfying. She'd been able to isolate me at my old school. I had a feeling that she'd find Amy a lot harder to intimidate.

After all, one you'd seen your entire family murder each other, bullying seemed like pretty small potatoes.

"I've got witnesses that she was trying to bully me," Emma said loudly. "Everybody saw it."

The crowd around her was ever so slightly moving away from her. What was happening? At Winslow it would have been a done deal by now. Even the girls who were presumably with her were looking strangely uncomfortable.

"That's not what I heard," Panacea said.

Dennis echoed the sentiment.

"We take a dim view on bullying, Miss Barnes," the teacher said. He was a tall, stringy looking man who looked a little like an ex-hippie. "Luckily we're right next to the principal's office. We're going to have a discussion about what's appropriate."

What the hell had just happened?

People standing up for me? It felt like it had to be a setup. Even though my conscious mind knew there were reasons for it, my gut kept telling me that the other shoe was going to fall soon.

It took less than a half hour and Emma was expelled. Apparently the principal had information about the former bullying attempt on me, and she'd only been let in on probation.

What confused me was why they'd let her in at all if they'd known about her former history with me. If the principal was as frightened of me as Sophia thought, why run that kind of risk?

At lunch the others were able to piece things together. Apparently the school had done everything they could to make sure that we didn't have any of the same classes or that we would even be in the same wing of the school at the same time. Alan Barnes had pulled some serious strings, and the principal hadn't been able to explain why it wasn't a good idea for her to come, not without involving the PRT, which would have run the risk of revealing my secret identity.

I'd never really told the PRT all that much about the bullying anyway. They'd probably assumed that it hadn't been that bad, or that I would be able to ignore it now that I was the most powerful person on the planet.

It had been hoped that the acrimony between the two of us would have cooled enough that nothing had happened. After all, Sophia had been one of the perpetrators, and she and I had apparently made peace with each other. In their minds Emma wouldn't be that much different.

Where Dean had gotten that information I couldn't be sure; I was sitting with Sophia and Amy, and as her sister's former boyfriend it made sense for him to sit near us too. I suspected that he'd called the Ward's handlers who had tracked down the information, or maybe just made up a convenient lie that they thought I would accept.

It bothered me how smug I felt.

I'd hated the way that Sophia, Madison and Emma had gamed the system. They'd been able to abuse me for as long as they did because the system was corrupt, rigged in their favor. Now I'd gotten Emma kicked out for the same reason.

Part of me enjoyed the irony, while the other part of me enjoyed the irony. The one thing that reassured me was that the teacher Dean had collared hadn't hesitated to help, and presumably he didn't know who I was.

After lunch I watched more closely, and while I did see a couple of incidents of bullying, it was mostly from kids who were new to the school, and the teachers seemed to crack down on it as well as they could. While they couldn't see every time it happened, they seemed to listen when people made the accusation, and do their best to address it.

It felt a little unreal, having teachers who actually cared. They were somewhat better than the teachers at Winslow, although not by as much as I had fantasized. They had access to actual schoolbooks, though, not twenty year old tattered rejects like at my old school.

There was no graffiti on the walls, and no one was carrying guns or knives in class. Hardly anyone had tattoos, and there was no one who was immediately identifiable as a gang member; I had no doubt that they were there, but they weren't blatant about it.

Of course, the gangs these days weren't what they had been. I had a feeling that the kids who had Empire 88 tattoos were now feeling pretty isolated and stressed now that the gang wasn't there to protect them.

Still, even if they were only pretending to be my friends, it had felt really good to have them stand up for me. That was something that I hadn't experienced in a long time, and it was surprising how much I'd missed it.

Was this Piggot's diabolical plan; to make me care about people?

In all, I didn't make any new friends on my first day back to school, but I did feel better about the whole thing. Maybe this was a place that I wouldn't have to dread, other than the boredom that was part of the whole experience.

I even found myself doodling some ideas about new ways to use Ki in class. I kept thinking that I had the whole teleportation thing down; it had happened to me often enough that I was getting a clearer and clearer idea of what it was The main problem was figuring out how to get from one side to the other.

The main problem was locking in on the destination. Without that it couldn't happen.

I had a few ideas I'd like to try; if I ever got it under control, Shucai would crap himself with envy.

For some reason, I really, really wanted that to happen. After all, in a way he was my new Emma, only one I could actually punch without feeling guilty.

He kept bragging about all the ways his people had developed to use Ki, but he hadn't shown me anything other than that cutting disc. I'd love to show him something truly innovative. Plus, teleportation was really, really cool.


	60. Destination

"It won't work," Leet said. "Without a destination either you'll go nowhere, or everywhere."

I would have thought his experience in Hawaii would have shaken him, but he seemed on the surface to be more cheerful than normal. Apparently he'd met a girl while they were in the shelters, a gamer girl, and he was unusually excited.

My curiosity about the kind of girl who'd actually be interested in him notwithstanding, I was more interested in his help with the teleportation problem.

"What does that even mean?" I asked.

"Either it simply won't work at all, in which case there's no harm other than whatever energy you spend, or it will work, which is much, much worse."

"Oh?"

"Your atoms would be spread across the universe. It wouldn't have an infinite range, since the universe isn't infinitely large, but it would at least be a range larger than the galaxy."

"That's not something I could come back from."

He shrugged. "You've come up with some weird crap for a brute, but powers mostly don't work very far from Earth, so my educated opinion would be not."

"So what can I do?" I asked.

"Well, when I develop a teleportation device, I usually have some sorts of sensors to detect the destination. Sometimes it can be a satellite, assuming the sensors are good enough. Usually they aren't, and I haven't yet launched my own."

He stared at me for a moment.

"Say..."

"We'd have to clear it with the Protectorate first," I said. "I get in enough trouble already without being accused of putting a death ray into space."

He scowled, then nodded. "You made it into low earth orbit with Behemoth, so I know that your powers work that far up. A little toss and we'd get out of the gravity well a lot cheaper than me building something."

"And it's a lot less likely to get shot down by the military if I'm carrying it," I said dryly. "That's the real reason."

He flushed. "The FCC is being real dicks about accepting my application."

"Why does the Federal Communication Commission have jurisdiction over satellite launches?"

"Who the hell knows?" he said. "Probably because there wasn't anyone else. The FAA has some "control, but they haven't been nearly as dickish about the whole thing."

"You shouldn't have painted it like the Death Star," Garrett said. He had bags of groceries in his hands. "The government doesn't have any sense of humor about that kind of thing."

"It's just a paint job!" Leet insisted.

"And you didn't include a death ray in the plans just because it would be cool," Garrett asked.

"It'd be _useful_..." Leet said. "Knowing that I could rain death down on anybody's heads that I wanted... it'd be a little bit like being Taylor."

"It's not like that for me," I protested. "You act like I'm Shucai or something."

"Well, you're a little less of a crazy asshole than he is," Leet said. "Even if he does keep trying to argue with Uber about training."

" _What does a powerless fool like you know about training a member of the one true race?_ " Garrett said, mimicking Shucai's voice expertly. "As though I didn't manage to get someone stronger than him off the ground."

"How are the mini-Saiyens doing with training?"

"Still scared of their own shadows," Leet admitted. "It's like they aren't even brutes. Your Dad could beat the whole lot of them, and he's not even that strong."

Garrett and Leet had taken over the training while I was in school, something that Shucai seemed to take as an almost personal affront. I wasn't sure why; he'd had years to train them himself if it had been so important to him, and he never had.

"He was impressed with the holodeck, though, even if he complained about it being so fragile," Leet said.

"They're on their way now," I said. I could sense them flying toward us. Dad was with them.

At least the mini-Saiyens could fly now; that was a minor improvement over their capabilities. They hadn't even been able to manage that before; thankfully Dad was teaching them. They were still wobbly though.

I actually enjoyed flying, although I hadn't got to do it as much as I would like. Mostly my time had been monopolized, either with fighting, training, or dealing with political bigwigs. Now I was having to deal with school too. It was a lot on my plate, and I needed to get stronger if I was going to make more of a difference than I already had.

It worried me a little that I was already counting the days until Leviathan attacked. He was weaker in some ways than Behemoth, but if he was willing to stop holding back, there was a very good chance that he would try to drown me.

Perhaps I could train my ability to hold my breath. I'd have to talk to Panacea about whether that was going to lead to brain damage with my physiology or not; an ordinary human brain could only go three minutes without oxygen without being damaged, but I was pretty sure that I'd had times where I'd gone without breathing for longer, especially when Behemoth had held my face in the lava.

"I guess I've got to go meet them," I said. I slipped my new helmet on, and a moment later I was moving invisibly outside the warehouse.

The Protectorate had quietly been buying up all the buildings around Leet's lair; since the Slaughterhouse attack property had gotten cheap, although since Behemoth the real estate market had been heating up.

There were all kinds of precautions being used to protect its location; its value as a training facility was greatly appreciated by the Protectorate, especially now that Leet had created Endbringer programs. They were based on data from a program created by Armsmaster, and were the most realistic simulation ever developed for likely Endbringer Behavior.

I'd tried it once with Behemoth, but I'd been afraid to move in there for fear of knocking out a wall. It was like fighting in a room full of eggs you weren't allowed to break.

"Hello Egg," Shucai said. I'd dropped the holographic invisibility as I met them in mid air, not that it would have done any good with his Ki sense.

"That's not even a vegetable!" I protested.

"It means you are white on the outside and yellow on the inside... but still not a vegetable."

I stared at him. Was that a complement? Or was he saying I wasn't an actual Saiyen? It was amazing that my Dad even tolerated being around him; his disdain toward him was palpable.

"Maybe I should have some pet names for you?" I said. "Maybe I'll call you Durian."

"That's a fruit!" he barked.

"It's thorny on the outside, yellow on the inside, and it stinks," I said.

"Tay...Sparta!" Dad said. "No racist metaphors."

"I wasn't saying yellow like Asian," I said slowly. "I was talking about the other kind of yellow... the kind that runs down your leg when things get dangerous."

This time I was able to see his fist as it approached my face, and move aside. "You're going to have to catch me first!"

It was important to move this away from Brockton Bay. If one of us hit the other hard enough, the sonic boom would destroy those few new glass windows that had been put in for blocks in every direction. Armsmaster had calculated how far out we needed to be before we didn't have to worry about it, and it was at least thirty miles.

Moving that far out into the open ocean was trivial, and a moment later he was pummeling away at me.

"It must chap your hide that a fourteen year old girl is stronger than you," I taunted. "That she has already accomplished something that your people, for all their supposed knowledge couldn't accomplish in a thousand years."

I punched me in the stomach and I grinned at him.

"You'll never catch up, you know, not unless I slow down and let you," I smirked, and he punched me in the face. It didn't matter. I swung at him, and a moment later we were punching wildly at each other.

This was the best type of training, actually hitting each other and making each other bleed. It was the only way to really get strong.

I could feel the others finally arriving. It had taken them longer than I'd thought, which either meant that they were slow, or Shucai and I were getting faster.

Two punches to my ribs and I actually clipped him on the jaw. We were punching each other fast enough that the sonic boom from our fists could have probably shattered windows all on their own.

I grinned at him as I kicked him in the crotch. He managed to turn enough that I only got him in the hip. It seemed like I learned the fastest this way, faster than any of the slow training I'd gotten from Garrett, faster than anything.

Going all out was heady pleasure, especially in a situation like this where lives weren't on the line. When we finished I'd probably spend the night in a Bacta tank; it was best not to annoy Amy for minor things unless we had to.

She was sleeping in the Wards quarters now, even though she wasn't officially one of them. The Protectorate had taken steps to become her guardian. I hadn't even realized that a corporation could be someone's guardian, but I supposed that's what orphanages are.

I found myself flying backwards toward the others; I managed to stop myself a few feet from them, and I looked back at Dad.

"These guys enjoy fighting yet?" I asked.

He shook his head. He'd rejected fighting as a lifestyle for reasons that had nothing to do with cowardice, but deep inside he enjoyed it too. Their distaste for it was confusing to him as well.

I launched myself back at Shucai and he went flying in the other direction.

The problem was that they'd been conditioned for a long time to see fighting as punishment. Punishment was something to avoid. They'd never really had any power of their own, and they'd never had a chance to express their own power. They'd never gotten to experience the joy of impressing their will on the world.

Pain only had the meaning that you gave it.

Many people had pain when they had to walk a long way; I knew people who had walked fourteen miles when they were at Disney, and they had barely noticed because they were having so much fun.

Let them run out of gas and walk the same distance to fill up, and they'd complain about the pain the entire way. The physical pain was the same but their experience of the pain was completely different.

When you enjoyed fighting, and saw it as a means to an end, pain didn't mean the same either. For most creatures pain means something is wrong, but for us pain means getting stronger. It is like the muscle soreness after a good workout, a sign that you are doing something right.

I could feel my eye and lip swelling; without Panacea or a Bacta tank, I'd have to skip school. Teachers were required abuse by law, and most of them didn't have any idea what I was.

Luckily I had those things, though, so Shucai and I could beat each other as much as we wanted without consequences. It felt great.

"I don't understand," the small translator on his shirt said a moment after he spoke. Leet had been kind enough to rent them to the Chinese government for a fee. Considering that they were already paying for the use of the holodeck. He was making some serious coin from all his business ventures, far more than he'd have ever made as a criminal.

After all, the average bank robbery only netted nineteen thousand dollars, since most criminals never managed to get into the vault. That was often split between three or four men, which meant that they were making less than five thousand each for a possible twenty five year jail term.

Armored cars were a better bet, but it would still take multiple armored cars before one person could retire to live a modest life. Unless you were running drugs or some kind of criminal organization, or running stock frauds or something crime wasn't really profitable.

"We're going to be fighting in the dark," I said. I waited a moment as the translator to finish speaking in Chinese. For some reason, Leet had chosen Morgan Freeman's voice.

"How?"

"You can sense me with Ki," I said. "Right?"

He nodded slowly.

"Which means you know where I am."

"I do not know the positioning of your arms or legs," he said.

"That doesn't matter," I said. "You know exactly where I am. That means you can attack me. I may be able to block you, but I can't see you any better than you can see me."

"You are stronger and faster," he said.

I stared at him. "So? How are you to get stronger and faster if you don't fight someone who is all of that?"

He stared at me mulishly. It seemed that he didn't want to get stronger or faster.

Getting stronger or faster just meant more and more punishment from the government; being forced to take on more and more responsibility. From what little I'd been able to get from them, those who survived were those who kept their heads down.

Those who fought back against the regime were executed before they had a chance to be a threat. Apparently their every action was monitored at all times, and everything they did was reviewed and criticized.

In a way, they were in the position I had been in before my powers had manifested. No matter what they did they were punished. If they fought, they were punished. If they didn't, they were punished. They were like incompetent middle managers who were determined to do just enough to keep from getting in trouble without actually working that hard.

"If you were to hit one of your commanders in the face, what would happen?" I asked.

He paled a little and shook his head.

The others who were watching reacted much the same way, although Shucai was impassive. Of course, he wasn't really in the same program as they were; as I understood it he was more a mercenary who chose to work with them, and despite whatever tied he claimed to the Emperor, he didn't strike me as someone who was loyal to anyone other than himself.

"You know how I would react if you hit _me_ in the face?" I asked.

He shook his head.

"I'd be proud of you," I said. "We aren't like normal people. We have to fight; need to fight if we're ever going to reach our full potential."

I turned to the others.

We were in the junkyard; they didn't understand why, even though I did. If I was to fight without being able to see, I'd probably destroy things. That could not happen at the holodeck, but destroying things here wasn't such a big deal. As I would be dialing my power down to levels they could survive, we didn't have to be farther away from Brockton Bay either.

"I'll tell you what," I said. "I'll fight in a blindfold, and the rest of you can fight without. I want you all to dab your hands in that red paint over there, and then we'll see if you can hit me."

Shucai smirked.

"Shucai excepted, of course. If he hits me things will get a little destructive."

They looked reluctant, but shortly they were all dipping their hands in the paint. On my directions, they surrounded me.

Ki isn't just something that you use to blast things; it's also a thinker power. You can use it to find out where your opponents are coming from, and that will give you an opportunity.

I slipped the blindfold over my eyes.

As they moved into position, I could feel one of them lunging toward me from behind. I couldn't see his arms, but I'd seen enough of how they fought to make an accurate guess of where he might be aiming.

The benefit of my power level now was that it felt like I had an endless amount of time to think while their incredibly slow attack inched its way toward me.

I twisted out of the way as there was a second of them, and then a third.

Soon enough all five of them were attacking me, and I was moving. Ki was enough to figure out their exact position, but I had to depend on my hearing and feeling the wind of their limbs moving to get a clearer idea of where they were attacking.

Frankly, they moved so slowly it was like attacking statues, but I was enjoying this nonetheless.

They were so slow that my mind had time to wander. They had no idea how precise Ki could be. I could locate anyone on Earth with greater precision than most satellites.

I could... wait.

I'd been wracking my brain over the whole destination issue with teleportation. Maybe it was impossible to go to an empty location where I had never been. Even if I had been somewhere, the world moves constantly, and who is to say that my memory would be good enough to remember my exact location.

But if someone else was there already, they could be my anchor.

I stopped, suddenly. That was it! This was the missing piece to the puzzle, the one part that I needed to give me the ability to teleport. It would also be even more terrifying to the people in power; it was bad enough to have someone with the power of a nuke; it was worse when she could find you anywhere in the world and teleport right next to you while you were on the toilet.

Suddenly I felt wetness hitting me in the face and chest, back and legs.

Right... I was in the middle of something.

I suddenly wondered how hard it would be to get red paint out of my hair.

Hopefully it wouldn't be that bad.


	61. Void

Red paint was a lot harder to get out of your hair than I would have thought, and I still had some showing when I went to school the next day. I made excuses about painting my house to those few who seemed curious about it, and I spent the rest of the day daydreaming about my newest revelation.

Without Emma there I didn't seem to draw much in the way of attention. I probably could have made friends, but friends didn't seem important, not compared to what I had planned.

I hadn't tried it yet, for several reasons. The mini-Saiyens had broken their hands on me, which had required healing; I was impressed that they had lashed out so hard. The human hand really was easy to injure, but they should have been protecting their hands better with Ki. There had been lessons about that after they all had been healed.

It had been late by the time everything was done, and Shucai had enjoyed my being splashed with paint entirely too much.

He'd made several rather rude comments that had made me feel tempted to hit him again, but it was late, and if I had I'd have shattered what windows had been replaced in a quarter of the city. It was a little disappointing that we were getting so strong that the world itself wasn't able to handle us.

His comments quelled any desire I might have had to show him my new technique until I had mastered it. Just the thought of the look on his face spurred me on.

Of course, keeping it secret wouldn't be as easy as just going to the junkyard. His Ki sense had to cover at least half the Earth, and it was possible that it covered the entire planet. The only way I'd be able to hide what I was doing was to conceal my Ki before I started practicing the other thing.

I'd seen him do it several times while surprising the younger ones, usually to punish them for something that they were doing wrong. He seemed to enjoy their looks of terror when he caught them out. As far as I was concerned that wasn't helping their psychological problems, at least not unless it was framed as being part of training, and they didn't have that mindset yet.

He almost seemed to take a sadistic delight in tormenting them, and there was a light in his eyes when he looked at me that was more than competitive. It was like his favorite thing in the world would be to kill me.

Sucai would notice immediately if I vanished from one place and ended up in another. I suspected that like me he had a subconscious lock on every person he'd ever met who was powerful enough to be a threat.

In my case, that meant the Endbringers, ShuCai, Eidolon and Alexandria. I didn't see Legend as being that threatening, despite the versatility of his energy blasts. Alexandria probably wasn't strong enough to hurt me seriously before I went Super-Saiyen, but her durability was concerning.

It was possible to breach it; otherwise she wouldn't be missing an eye. I couldn't be sure that I was strong enough even now, and it wasn't something I could test, because I also suspected that she couldn't heal.

With anyone else I could break bones, or create horrific injuries, and as long as I didn't actually kill them I had options for healing. With her, I suspected that even Panacea wouldn't be able to do anything.

Her Ki was a little weird and tainted anyway. I'd seen Shucai staring at her a time or two, and I knew that he could sense it as well as I could. It was like she was alive, but not, a little like Schrodinger's cat, only there had never been a box.

That was why I spent Tuesday evening practicing hiding my Ki.

I enlisted Dad's help for this, even though I didn't tell him the ultimate reason for it. He understood the ultimate usefulness of it; having Shucai know it and us not knowing it was a major tactical advantage.

It probably would have been easier if Shucai had taught it to me, but I strongly doubted that he would agree to it. For one thing, if we were to ever fight for real, it would be too much of a tactical advantage for him to give up. For another thing, he'd want to know why I'd want to know it. It wasn't like there were a lot of people out there who could sense Ki. As far as we knew, it was only me, Dad and the Chinese.

It took much of the evening to get to the point where not only could I reliably do it, but I could tell when it was working as well. It involved wrapping my Ki around myself in something like a Mobius strip. It was impossible to conceal the Ki from close up, but it would work just fine from distances of more than a half block.

Against someone with a weak Ki sense, like Dad or one of the Mini-Saiyens, I might as well have been invisible. The only way to become invisible to Shucai would be to reduce the flow of Ki to the point that I'd actually be vulnerable to him. That was something I had no plans to do around him, ever.

The fact that Shucai himself had bothered to learn the technique at all was a sign either of how many Saiyens there either were or had once been in the world, or how crazy prepared he was.

After all, as far as I knew we were the only ones who were able to use Ki, so the only use for the technique would be against other Saiyens.

My guess was that he'd fought others before. It might even be why there was only one very powerful Saiyen and a few weak ones.

Was that why he'd been fighting in so many places around the world? Had there been other branches of the family like me and Dad that we just hadn't known about? If there were, I'd bet money that they didn't exist now.

Had he done it on his own, or had the Chinese government put him up to it? He'd been fighting since before the CUI existed, bit it was possible that he'd been fighting for his masters long before they'd taken China.

Was that the real reason that the others didn't want to get strong? Was it because they knew that Shucai would use them to get stronger and then kill them? If that was the case, then the only way to stay alive would be to stay weak, beneath his notice.

We were giving a lot of trust to him and the Chinese. I suspected that he would never be satisfied to have me be stronger than he; killing me would be the easiest solution to that. My existence threatened his supremacy in a way Alexandria did not. After all, like most parahumans her power was set in stone. It didn't grow. As long as Shucai and I trained with the same intensity, he would never ever catch up with me, and I could see that he knew it. The only question would be whether it would happen before or after we'd saved the world.

It would be common sense to wait to try until after, but I still wasn't sure whether he completely believed me about Scion. Even worse, he was arrogant enough to think he'd be able to do it on his own. Hadn't he sensed how strong Scion was? Or didn't he believe us about Scion's ultimate plans?

Either way, he would be curious as to why I was hiding myself, and if I did it anywhere near Brockton Bay he'd probably come nosing around to see what I was doing.

So I flew across the Atlantic Ocean, heading for the Sahara desert. If I was right about this, distance wouldn't be a factor for the teleportation. The only thing that would matter at all would be how far away I could sense Ki, and the truth was that I didn't have any idea how far away that was.

I couldn't sense any Ki outside the Earth's atmosphere, but that might be because there wasn't anything living out there within range. Would I be able to sense someone on Mars if they were there? I wouldn't know until someone was there. Or was my theoretical teleportation ability limited to the upper atmosphere like many parahuman powers?

Could I someday sense life on other planets? If Scion was really extraterrestrial, that meant that there were others out there. The distances between planets was huge, but it was possible that I might be the first (mostly) human being to visit other worlds.

I'd have to acquire a space suit, and they were even more expensive here than they were on Earth Aleph because our space program had been scuttled.

I'd heard that it might cost two million dollars to buy a space suit. Of course, if I somehow killed the Simurgh, I was pretty sure that someone in science would be happy to provide me with a space suit and a video camera.

The first real views of life on other planets would be worth more than a couple of million dollars, a lot more, especially if I was able to bring back samples. That would be true even if all I was able to collect were weird, alien lichens.

It might even be the only way I could continue my development once Scion had gone. After all, I'd be the last one standing, and I'd still have a drive to get stronger. I'd need to find stronger opponents or I'd stagnate.

The Sahara desert was more beautiful than I would have thought. Temperatures got to over a hundred and fifty degrees during the day, hot enough that the animals couldn't come out for more than a few minutes at a time without dying.

It was the biggest desert on Earth, around the size of the entire United States.

Fortunately, four o'clock in the afternoon in Brockton Bay was ten at night here. The Sahara covered numerous time zones, but this seemed like a good place to start.

Of course it wouldn't have mattered to me; I'd stuck my face in the Ash Beast's fire. By comparison to that a hundred and fifty degrees was a warm summer's day.

Still, it was nice not to have to wear sunglasses as I floated over the landscape and closed my eyes.

I centered myself and I concealed my Ki. Letting Shucai know that I was coming here had been part of the plan. Disappearing while I was here would arouse his curiosity, but hopefully it was too far for him to bother to come, or I'd already be gone.

Sensing Dad wasn't hard, even through the veil I'd cast over my Ki. The veil made everything a little harder to do; it was harder to sense others even as it was harder to be sensed myself. However, Dad was the one person that I was always aware of, no matter what else was happening, and I locked onto him without much of an effort.

I drew power into myself.

It wasn't like when I'd done it before, a tsunami of power that overwhelmed everything else. This was a tiny trickle, partially because of my shield and partially because I wasn't really sure how much power this was going to take.

The frightening thing was that if it went wrong, it could go very wrong. I'd seen the Fly movie, and I'd had nightmares for a week about Jeff Goldblum mutating into something that wasn't human.

What I was going to do wasn't like that at all; I wasn't disassembling and then reassembling myself. If I could do that, then I'd have been effectively immortal. That had been the thing that had bothered me about Star Trek. If you could reassemble someone at an atomic level to teleport them, then you could _change_ them.

Why would anyone ever become ill if you had an old copy of the healthier version of them? Why age at all? Take a scan of someone when they were young and use that to make them young again.

You could probably even change their gender or regrow hair.

I'd mentioned it to Greg Vedar once and he'd gone on about the limitations of computer memory, but it seems to me that for eternal youth they'd have paid for some big computers, even if it had to be at an Earthbound facility.

It was debatable anyway as to whether the person who came out of the transporter was the same person who went in anyway.

What I was trying was much better.

When I gathered my energy I'd seen rocks and other objects floating; gravity itself seemed to be negated somehow. I'd read theories that gravity was in some way created by altering the fabric of space and time, and the things I'd felt by being teleported by multiple people had only confirmed that.

That was how Leet's devices teleported thing, although I was sure he could probably manage a Star Trek style disassembler. I wouldn't allow anything like that to be used on me, or course. Killing me and then recreating me as a clone using my own materials wasn't my idea of a good idea.

Twisting space was what Strider did as well.

I just had to make sure that when I twisted space I was able to do it in such a way that I could survive the transition.

After a moment I decided to change my target from Dad to Panacea. I was wearing my costume, so even if I somehow appeared next to her while she was with friends from school, it wouldn't matter. If I somehow managed to transport myself with my outsides on my insides and vice versa, then she might be able to patch me together.

It might even give me something of a power boost.

I realized after a moment that I was waffling. Part of me was reluctant to try this, memories of Jeff Goldblum in the back of my mind.

I gathered my power and I focused in front of me. Closing my eyes, I put a finger to my head. It probably wasn't necessary, but it felt like it helped me concentrate.

For a moment I thought I had it. I could see a few grains of sand rising up around me; there weren't many, and it could have been the wind, but I could see the moonlight shimmering as the space in front of me twisted a little.

I lost it after a moment, though. It was as though the fabric of the universe itself was slick and hard to grab hold of.

A second attempt, and this time I tried forcing more power into it. I was still holding the shield protecting my Ki from detection far off, and maybe that was part of the problem. It might be that I couldn't do it without using my full power.

Time after time I twisted the world, first this way and then that, until finally I twisted, and something felt _right_.

As I let the warping of space surround me, I realized suddenly that I'd been wrong. I wasn't actually twisting space from one part of the world to another. There was a space in between... a space between space.

Time seemed to stretch out, and yet it also seemed to not exist at all. I seemed to exist in an endless moment that didn't seem to take any time at all. I was everywhere and nowhere, and I realized that Leet had been right; if I hadn't had a link back to the real world I could have easily become lost here forever.

In the real world it was never actually silent. Even when there was no other sounds there was still the sounds of your own breathing, the sound of your own blood rushing through your veins, your own heartbeat. Usually those sounds were so ubiquitous that you weren't even aware of them.

In this world there was nothing but silence. It was as though I didn't have a body, and there was no sensation of feeling at all. There was simply the experience of infinity.

It would have been easy to let go, but I could feel Panacea on the other side, and I clutched to that lifeline. I pulled, and a moment later I felt time resume around me.

The sudden resuming of sound was thunderous, and I felt myself staggering. I was in an unfamiliar bedroom; the walls were covered with pink unicorns and Katy Perry posters.

Amy was on the bed, and there was another girl, and...

Oh.

I put my hand to my head, and a moment later I was back in the void. I reached Dad a moment later, and he fortunately wasn't doing anything embarrassing.

My face felt really hot for some reason. I couldn't blame Panacea for seeking comfort, not after everything that had happened. It was just a little weird that the girl she'd been with had looked so much like Victoria Dallon.

I shook my head.

It was just my mind playing tricks on me. I'd been and out so quickly that I wasn't sure either of the girls had noticed me. Hopefully not; the last thing I wanted to do was explain to the girl whose healing might save my life one day why I'd violated her privacy.

Like with many uncomfortable subjects I wasn't ready to deal with, I put it out of my mind.

The important thing was that Shucai was going to crap himself with jealousy when he saw what I could do... and I wasn't going to do it around him more than once so he couldn't learn it either.


	62. Uses for Ki

"I don't understand why it won't work," I said.

Dad shook his head. "You can't think that everything you try is going to be possible, just because you were... amazingly successful your first time out. If this had worked, it would be a game changer."

It had occurred to me that the more uses of Ki I could inundate Shucai with, the more he'd have to eat his words about his branch of the family being superior. There were other uses for Ki that I'd been thinking about, and this was one of the most innovative.

It occurred to me that if I could give people Ki, then I could take it away too. If I could do that, I might be able to drain people of their energy, and maybe even from a distance, which would make things like hostage situations easier. I might be able to give Ki from a distance as well.

I wanted to get better at Ki healing as well. It was hugely inefficient considering how much power I put into it. Maybe I needed Amy to give me some pointers on what was happening when I lent Ki to someone so that I could learn to be more energy efficient.

That was assuming that I could ever look her in the face again. I still didn't know whether she or her... girlfriend had seen me, and if they had how that was going to affect our relationship. I wasn't going to say anything about it, and in traditional Hebert style I'd hope that if I didn't talk about it long enough that it would go away.

"It works if I give you permission," he said.

I scowled. "I hardly think that a villain, or an Endbringer, or Scion is going to give me permission to take their Ki from them. That makes it next to useless."

"If you get low on energy, perhaps you can get energy from your allies?" he asked mildly.

"At the power level I'm at now, it would take the energy of a million people to make much of a difference," I said.

"What if you took it from a few people?" he asked. "From Alexandria, or Shucai?"

"Maybe," I acknowledged. "Maybe this isn't entirely useless. It's just frustrating."

"That you weren't able to add another power rating to your list?" he asked. "Mover 9 would be great for most people as a single power, much less added to Brute 10 and Blaster 10."

"I've got a Thinker rating for the Ki sense," I reminded him.

"Right, because it really matters whether you know they are coming or not," he said dryly.

I scowled at him, although I didn't really mean it. He'd been good enough to work with me on these things every day for a week. I could teleport much more easily now. It was like slipping on an old glove. The last thing I'd wanted was to figure out how to do it and then forget how.

"Ideally I should be able to use Ki to duplicate almost all of the power ratings," I said. "If I could drain the Ki from an entire crowd of people, I'd be able to pacify them without hurting them."

"Which would make you a shaker."

"I'm working on focusing my Ki into my fists," I said. "Increasing my power beyond what Super Saiyen would allow. It's a dangerous technique, because it requires that I reduce my defenses, but it would qualify me as a striker."

"I don't see how you could use it to become a Master," Dad said. "Or a changer or stranger."

I grinned at him. "There's something I haven't show you yet."

"What?"

We were at the holodeck, primarily because I was afraid that if my experiment worked too well Dad could be seriously hurt. I still wasn't sure whether I could teleport someone else with me, so it had seemed safer to be near the Bacta tanks.

I took a step back from dad and then I concentrated. I started moving, and a moment later I was moving faster than the human eye could see. I slowed down in three locations, stopping over and over and over again.

"Which of these is me?" I asked.

To the human eye, it would look as though I'd split myself into three different people. Dad was staring at me.

"I can make it look like I have more than two arms, too," I said. I moved my arms faster than the eye could see, creating the illusion that I had eight arms.

"That's kind of terrifying," Dad said. "I can at least kind of sense what you are doing through Ki, but to a normal person it would look totally real."

"Against Shucai or Scion it won't be worth crap," I admitted, "But I'm trying to think of as many new uses for Ki as I can, and even things that seem useless now might be useful in the future."

He was silent for a moment.

I continued. "I've found some other things out as well. You don't actually have to use your hands for the Kamehameha; you can actually fire it through your feet."

He frowned. "You'd better be careful with that."

"Yeah, I wouldn't want to accidentally destroy the planet," I said. "I'm not sure how useful it might be, unless I wanted to shoot myself forward like a rocket. I can already move forward pretty fast though; it would probably launch me into space."

Not that I couldn't achieve escape velocity on my own.

"I've been trying some things too. Seeing the things you've been trying to do, I could hardly just sit back and let you do all the work."

"You didn't have to do anything," I protested, even if secretly I was pleased. I suspected that the reason that more hadn't been done with Ki wasn't just because people had been ridiculously weak for most of their time on the planet. It was also because people in various branches of the family had hoarded their own special techniques to themselves. When they inevitably died, that knowledge died with them, only to be rediscovered much later, or not.

It was a little like science before the invention of the printing press, Many things had been invented in multiple locations, but because no one was communicating no one had been able to build on what had already been discovered. Once print had been invented, the pace of human knowledge had expended exponentially. One the Internet had been invented, it had grown even faster.

There had never been enough of us to get that ind of grown of knowledge. I suspected that it required a certain minimum population of researchers. But not reinventing the wheel every generation would prevent us from having periods like proto-humans had in the past, where they'd started using fire two million years ago, and only starting using clothes fifty thousand years ago.

What the hell had we been doing for two million years? Sticking our thumbs up our noses? It was because we didn't have writing, and for part of that time we didn't even have language, which was itself another knowledge multiplier, and so as much knowledge was lost as was gained.

Having Dad's help was better than nothing. If I could have trusted Shucai and the others, it would have been even better. However, part of the reason I needed some of these techniques was for the inevitable confrontation between us.

"I can't teleport; I'm not sure whether it's the fact that it takes a minimum level of strength, or because I just don't have the technique down yet." Dad said. "But there's something else I've actually managed to do."

He gathered his energy. It was wispy and almost ethereal; he still couldn't draw much in the way of energy, even if he was at least four times as strong as any of the younger Chinese. He held the power for a moment, and then he pointed at me.

A moment later I could see Ki coming from his hand. It would have been invisible to anyone else. It started to form around me, not unlike the Ki I used to protect myself. It took a moment to see what he was doing; he was using the Ki to create a barrier around me, something that was actually solid. I carefully put my hand against it, and it felt that way. The slightest push and the whole thing shattered though.

"You've made force fields to restrain people with?" I asked, stunned. It hadn't been very strong, but then Dad wasn't very strong compared to me. I wasn't sure just how well it would fare against a normal person though.

"It wouldn't stand up to a brute," Dad admitted. "But it was able to hold Leet and Garrett, which will be really useful for the kind of work that I do. I'll bet you can do it too, and whatever you come up with will be a lot stronger than what I have."

"Show me how to do it," I breathed. It was exciting; normally parahumans were stuck with whatever powers they were given when they triggered; it wasn't common to be able to create not just new uses for new powers, but new powers entirely.

It was exciting, and Shucai would turn green with envy.

Unfortunately, none of the things I'd done, other than maybe the teleportation was going to be a game changer. I needed something like that if I was going to take on the Simurgh, much less Scion.

Each was a small, incremental change. In science, little incremental increases like that built up over time, turning into a wave of knowledge. Unfortunately I had a feeling deep in my gut that I wasn't going to have that kind of time.

"You shouldn't be letting him get to you," Sophia said.

We were sitting in the cafeteria with Amy; her new girlfriend Rikki had lunch at a different period and so we were able to talk shop a little, even though we had to edit how we said it for fear of being overheard.

I scowled. "Everything is going great; Dad and the guys he's training are twice as strong as they were even a couple of weeks ago. I've been able to increase my strength by twenty percent in a month, but he's critical of everything."

It had been a month since I'd discovered teleportation, and I hadn't really done anything with it. It was frustrating. I wanted to throw it in Shucai's face, but part of me was afraid that he'd watch me do it and then copy it right there, the way I'd copied his ability to hide his Ki.

How frustrating it was to not be able to just go places, even if I had to know people there first. Of course, the face that I could be anywhere on Earth in a couple of hours made it much less useful than it would have been when I was younger.

"You've gotten better at... first aid," Amy said.

We'd been trying experiments with my pumping Ki into people. I would never be as good as she was at it, but now I was able to do more than just keep someone alive until help came. I still couldn't really _heal_ someone, not all the way, but I was able to heal them some and at a drastically reduced energy cost from before.

I still couldn't take energy without permission, but Amy said that when I had permission I wasn't really doing anything harmful to the people I was pulling from. With Protectorate permission I'd experimented on PRT volunteers, draining energy from as many as twenty people at once. According to Amy, it wasn't any harder on the body than giving blood.

It wasn't enough energy to be worth anything, though. Compared to my own natural energy, it was a literal drop in the ocean, and I was having trouble imagining a time when it would ever make a difference. If the energy of twenty normal people was enough to make the difference, we were in real trouble.

"Yeah, but that's not going to be enough to impress him," I said. "He seems determined to nitpick everything that I do."

"He's an asshole," Sophia said. "Doesn't like a strong woman. I hear that they're like that over there."

"Don't be racist," Amy said. "Although it might be true; he's older than he looks. Guys like that tend to stick with the way things were when they were young."

"He grew up in the sixties," I said. "That was all about sexual liberation and all that crap."

"Not in China," Amy said.

"What are you guys talking about?" a voice came from behind me. I sighed.

Susan was a nice girl, even if she liked to gossip a little more than was healthy. For some reason, she thought that I needed a friend, even if I wasn't really interested.

"I've got a martial arts teacher that's a jerk," I said.

In a way it was true. After a month of fighting Shucai on an almost daily basis, my actual martial arts skills were growing really quickly. It was like any other skill really; it was really easy to go from knowing nothing to knowing a little.

To go from knowing a little to knowing a little more wasn't hard either.

But the better you got, the harder it got to get better; the curve went up almost exponentially. For someone like Michael Jordan or Tiger Woods to better themselves was almost impossible.

That meant that I was learning much faster than Shucai, although how fast I was learning was sure to slow down at some point. In the meantime it had to be frustrating fro him to see the gap between us widening instead of closing; I'd managed to keep getting stronger as fast as he did, in part because I was training at least as hard as he was.

The Protectorate didn't even make me patrol much; I would occasionally drop down on a crime if I saw it and stop it, and there was never any word of complaint from them. I'd had to do a couple more publicity events, but no one had tried to shoot me in the face with a missile.

Apparently the ability to fight and kill an Endbringer tended to convince people that it wasn't worth it to attack me, physically at least.

Mostly the reason I didn't have to patrol was because I was considered to be on special duty with Shucai and the mini-saiyens. While I was training them that substituted for the work I would normally do for the Wards.

Everything had been really quiet as far as the Protectorate was concerned as well. The prevailing thought was that because criminals knew that I was only a phone call away, no Capes were interested in setting up shop here.

I was a lot like a country having a nuke, back in the pre-Scion days. No one attacked a country with nukes, even if similar countries all around them were rolled over by bigger countries. No one wanted to risk what would happen if they were used.

Susan stared at me. "I didn't know you take martial arts."

"I don't live in the best neighborhood," I said. "It's better if I know how to take care of myself."

"It's not that bad since Sparta showed up," she said. There was a sickening sound of hero worship in her voice, the kind of sound that had probably been in voice when I was a child talking about Alexandria.

That was part of the reason that I didn't want to be friends with Susan. It wasn't that I thought she had ulterior motives. It was that listening her talk about Sparta like she did was embarrassing.

Even worse, I couldn't really be honest with her about my identity. For one thing, it would likely out some of the other Wards, since they were the ones who I mostly spent my time with at school. Even worse, any normal friend I had was going to be someone who couldn't fight back if someone decided they needed leverage to control me.

That was undoubtedly part of what Piggot had planned for me. Give me connections to the normal world so that I didn't lose my head and decided that I knew how to run things better than everyone else.

She had no idea that I had no plan to try to take over. Ideally, if I was actually able to kill Scion I'd be strong enough to sense of there was other life in the galaxy. That would give me the chance to explore other worlds and maybe find other, stronger opponents to fight.

I just had to figure out how to focus on the Ki of a group of people instead of that of an individual that I knew. It was turning out to be a lot harder than teleportation was in general.

My pager went off suddenly, and then so did Sophia's and the pagers of every kid in the school. I was just looking down at it when the sound of the Endbringer alarms began to blare.

I saw the blood drain from everyone's faces at once. I heard a couple of the kids give a little scream, and a few kids started sobbing.

It had been raining all day; that could mean only one thing.

Leviathan was here.


	63. Trade

"But it's too early," I said. "The next one isn't supposed to be for another month."

It had only been two months. If the Endbringers were changing their patterns, it was because of what I had done. This was my fault. The fact that they were attacking my home town probably wasn't a coincidence either.

With Susan here, I couldn't say was that Leviathan was still hundreds of miles away. I would have been more concerned about it, but he had a habit of moving around a lot on the bottom of the ocean. And he'd come relatively close to Brockton Bay several times.

"It doesn't matter," Sophia said. "We've got to go."

That was her like always; Sophia didn't do introspection. Sometimes that meant that she didn't get better, but at times like this it meant that she did what she had to do without thinking.

"There's an Endbringer shelter nearby," Panacea said. She looked at me and Sophia. "There hasn't been a drill since the two of you transferred over."

"I know where it's at," I said, lying. It wasn't as though I was actually going, of course, and even if I was, I'd simply follow the Ki of all the people who were going to be inside.

People were gathering their bags and heading for the exits. There should have been panic, and I saw a lot of people crying, but no one was running for the doors. Apparently the drills here were a lot better than they were at Winslow, which actually wasn't close to an Endbringer shelter. Apparently people didn't care that much about the poor kids.

"Aren't you coming?" Susan asked. She was pale and sweating, but she actually stopped to check on us. That impressed me.

"We'll catch up," I said.

Susan hesitated. "But if you don't know the way... and the shelters fill up fast."

"I'll be fine," I said. "Worse comes to worse I'll go with Amy and help her with the wounded."

"That's not allowed," she said. "I checked."

"My Dad works part time for the PRT," I said. I'd told her that before. It was part of my official cover. Supposedly Dad was working as a liaison between the PRT and the Dockworkers. I doubted that anyone would really buy it, but these days I found myself caring about that less and less.

Compared to me Dad was incredibly weak; on the scale of ordinary parahumans however, he was mid-tier. He could protect himself, and that set my mind at ease.

Sophia was already gone, which is what I should have done instead of sitting around and making excuses. She would be working search and rescue, but she was going to go. This was her town, and she wasn't going to back down or show that she was afraid, even though she undoubtedly was.

I wasn't, not at all. Leviathan wasn't as strong as behemoth, although he was supposedly faster and smarter. I wouldn't be as handicapped as I had been with Behemoth, either, forced to work around a power that almost seemed designed to handicap my strongest ability.

What I was mostly feeling was anticipation, and a little worry about the fallout; this city had already taken a lot of damage; the last thing it needed was to have half the city wiped off the map.

Amy looked at me and smirked. "Sucks not being out, doesn't it?"

"Of the closet?" I asked.

There were still people within earshot; the last thing I needed was for people to suspect that I was Sparta. While I didn't care about my secret identity that much, I didn't want to have fanboys and girls making my life a living hell.

There was a reason for secret identities, and not all of them involved safety.

She scowled at me and shot me the finger. It had taken her a while to accept that she was gay; I wasn't sure whether she'd have been able to do it at all if Carol Dallon had still been alive. I had the impression that the woman hadn't approved of a lot of the things that Amy did.

Now she seemed more at peace with herself.

Rikki seemed like a nice enough girl, even if she was a year older than Amy. I had an uneasy suspicion that Amy had been making small modifications to her girlfriend, though. She hadn't looked quite so much like Glory Girl when they'd met; her hair had been sandy blonde instead of it's current color, her breasts hadn't been as large, her features quite so perfect.

Part of me wondered how much Rikki was simply using Amy to get free cosmetic work done, and how much Amy was using Rikki to work through whatever... strange issues that she had.

I could sense Chris and Dennis running toward us.

"You aren't on your way?" Chris asked, pushing his way through the doors even as the last of the other students left.

"Leviathan is still three hundred miles out," I said. "At the rate he's going, it's going to be another twenty minutes before he gets here."

"We're going to miss Legend's speech," Chris said.

"The one where he tells us that three quarters of us are going to die?" I asked. "Pass."

"No... this is the first year that he won't be using that speech... because of you. I'll bet his speech this time is going to kick ass."

I frowned, then shrugged. "Yeah, let's go then."

It took us less than five minutes to get there once we slipped into our costumes. Amy and the others went by PRT van while I teleported to Dad's side.

Everyone probably assumed that I'd just been moving so fast that they didn't see me. It didn't matter. I was here, and I was ready.

I felt a tap on my shoulder.

It was Alexandria.

"I need to talk to you," she said.

"Yes?"

"Away from everyone else."

She pulled me into a side room.

"What's going on?"

She was silent for a moment. "I can't believe that I'm about to say this, but I need you to not make this too easy."

"What?"

"How many opportunities are you going to have to get stronger before we fight Scion?"

I stared at her. "So you want me to fight without going Super Saiyen, let me get knocked around enough that I can get stronger, and then doing it a couple more times before I finish the whole thing."

"You caught onto my meaning pretty quickly," she said.

"I've been thinking about doing it since I heard the Endbringer alarms," I said. "And part of me really wants to, but I love this city. I can't let Leviathan destroy it while I don't do my best. People depend on me."

"This is going to be one of your last chances," she said. "I've been following the rate you are getting stronger. If the current projections by our thinkers are accurate it won't be enough. You need to do this."

"And what am I going to tell the people out there while they're dying?" I asked. "Those people are depending on me."

"They'll be depending on you when the end comes too," she said. "And not just in this Earth. All the Earths, in all the universes. Ten followed by more than eighty zeroes Earths; there are innocent people out there right now who have never heard of Scion, who will die if you don't finish what you started."

"You've got Shucai," I said.

"If it comes to that we'll use him," she said. "But we expect that if he kills Scion, then he will likely take over the CUI within a year. Six months after that they will conquer the rest of the world, and then they will start assaults on other Earths, starting with the China of Earth Aleph."

"And you're going to allow that?" I asked.

"Better to live under a boot heel than to not live at all. Their reign might last a thousand years but in the end people will fight for freedom. But if no one is alive, there won't be anyone to be free."

Frowning, I said, "I don't know if I could make that kind of decision. I guess if it means that all those other earths could go free you think it's worth it?"

She nodded shortly.

Alexandria really wasn't the person I'd thought she was when I was a little girl. I'd thought she was a hero, a shining paragon, someone who did what was right because it was right. It was disappointing to learn that she was just as corrupt or even more so than Blackwell had been. I had no doubt that she would have been willing to throw one student under the bus for the good of the school.

"You basically want me to let Leviathan beat me up so I get stronger, while he's destroying the entire city around me. People are going to know that's what I'm doing."

"We'll manage the PRT and the Protectorate," she said. "We'll come up with an excuse."

There were kids at school who worshiped Sparta. It had been annoying, but a little flattering. If their families died because I was grandstanding, I doubted that hero worship would remain.

It shouldn't have mattered, but it did.

"I'll think about it," I said.

Before she could say anything else to make my image of her worse, I left.

There was a crowd gathered outside the PRT headquarters; no one was stupid enough to gather at the Rig, given that it was out in the water.

Legend was up on a dais, and he was speaking passionately.

"The Endbringers are not immortal!" he was saying. "For as long as we have fought them we have always thought of them almost as forces of nature. Success was measured in losing the fewest lives, and sometimes the deaths of thousands were considered an even trade if tens of thousands were saved."

He was silent a moment. "Those days are done."

Shucai was standing nearby, as were the mini-Saiyens.

"I'm surprised to see you here," I said.

"It was an Endbringer that made you what you are today," he said. "If this is what I must do, then I shall do it."

In other words, he wouldn't be here at all unless it involved a chance of becoming a super Saiyen. I still didn't understand why he hadn't gone after Endbringers in the past. Was it because Panacea had only been operating for the past six months? If healing took a lot longer, that would change the calculation as to who and when you attacked people.

Still, I would have thought a country as large as the CUI would have had some healers.

Legend was still speaking. "We have bled rivers of blood for these monsters. Good men and women have died each and every time we have encountered them. They didn't give their lives because of gold, or even glory. All that is left of them is a name on a plaque. They gave their lives because they believed that they needed to hold the line. Whatever they called themselves in life, in death they were all heroes."

He smiled. "But today, we will do more than just hold the line. We will take the fight to the monster. Some of us may indeed die, but not in the numbers who died in the past. We will no longer be fighting futilely; we have a chance now. There is a phrase that I want you all to remember..."

He was silent, and I could almost see everyone leaning forward.

"One down, and two to go," he said.

The crowd erupted into cheers.

They were cheering because they thought they actually had a chance. They didn't realize that I was supposed to throw the fight. While I was not fighting my strongest, people were going to be dying; these people.

I'd seen videos of Leviathan fighting; I'd even practiced against virtual versions in the holodeck. He killed people with water even while he was fighting other people physically. Even if I had Shucai and could trust him enough to fight and not throw me under the bus, there was only so much I could do. Three of the Triumvirate fought every Endbringer fight, and it had never been enough to do that much damage to them.

Leviathan was probably weaker than Behemoth, but I suspected that he had the same toughness. Behemoth had been incredibly hard to chop down even when I was fifty times as strong as I was now.

I was troubled, though. If Alexandria was right, what right did I have to trade my own pride for the survival of trillions of trillions of trillions of people that I would never meet?

Was sacrificing one person for a trillion wrong? Who was I to make that kind of decision?

There was no guarantee that even if I did this it would be enough. The fact that I could always go Super Saiyen would probably make me feel like I was in less danger than I was.

I turned abruptly, and Shucai did as well.

Leviathan was coming in an incredible rate of speed under the water. He was heading for us, and he was less than five minutes away.

"He's almost here," I shouted. "Everybody needs to get ready."

I flew upward; there was a massive wall of water coming toward the city, one larger than anything I'd ever seen in any of the old clips. If it hit, then it would wash the entire city off the map, and there would be no need to worry about saving one person or another.

My mind raced. I'd been working on ways to use my Ki differently. I'd shot it out of my feet and I'd blasted it in all sorts of different ways.

What was needed here was something that was fundamentally different. It was the opposite of Shucai's technique. Instead of focusing down the power into a small edge, increasing the cutting power, what was needed was to disperse the power, so that it affected as much of the horizon as possible.

Golden light flared around me and I could feel the coldness settle over me as it did every time I became a Super Saiyen.

That was the part that scared me when I wasn't like this. When I was like this I was angrier, and things that bothered me in my base form didn't bother me at all. Everything seemed so clear like this.

Of course I should try to get strong. Nothing was more important when the fate of the world was at stake.

But for the moment, the important thing was to try something new.

"KA," I said.

A massive wind began to whip around me as I drew on my power. The people below grabbed for anything they were holding as it all began to rise into the air.

"ME"

Some of the people themselves began to rise. Other, stronger members grabbed them. Normally I would have been horrified by this, but if I wasn't successful, everyone was dead.

"HA"

The ground shook all around us. Whether it was from the approaching tsunami, or whether it was because of what I was doing I couldn't be sure.

"ME"

People were shouting at me; they were gathering behind some other people who were putting up force fields. I could have tried Dad's technique, but against billions of tons of water it wouldn't have held. I knew that within my bones.,

"HAAAAAA!"

Energy exploded from my hands, exploding in a blinding flash that covered every part of the horizon. The Rig had been abandoned, which was good, because I saw it disintegrate into nothingness as my beam passed over it on its way to meet the wall of water.

It was a two hundred foot wall of water that reached from one end of the horizon to the other.

For a moment the flash blinded even me, and then the spots vanished from my eyes. I blinked.

Billions of tons of water were...gone.

The people below me were staring, slack jawed. Even Alexandria, who had started to follow us was staring at me like she'd never seen me before.

Shucai looked furious.

I started to grin at him, but then I felt something hit my skin. It was hot, even in this form, and I could hear people beneath us starting to scream.

I could see red and boiling blisters on the skin of those people who weren't protected by the shields. They screamed and tried to cover their faces, but that left their arms and hands exposed, and burning.

All of that water hadn't simply vanished. It had become a deadly rain, hot enough to melt skin, and the people here were exposed. How this would affect the people in the Endbringer shelters I couldn't be sure, but anyone out in it wasn't going to have a very good time.

It was possible that something like this was going to affect world weather patterns, and I had likely just destroyed God knows how many satellites; it wasn't like we had that many of them since the Simurgh started interfering with space travel.

Had I just made things worse?

Shit.


	64. Leviathan

The boiling rain fell for several moments, in defiance of all known physics. Given what I had done to the tsunami, it should have turned into superheated steam, which could have possibly damaged everyone's lungs to the point that they wouldn't be able to breathe.

It also should have been blowing out to sea instead of this way. I'd counted on that, assuming that the only people at risk would be people in ships. Presumably whatever water had been heated would cool down by the time it reached Europe, at which point no one would have to worry about it.

Instead, the rain was coming in this direction, and as people sought shelter, the rain droplets changed course in midair to follow them. There were dozens of people, and rain followed all of them individually. I could see panic on people's expressions.

It wasn't that the rain itself was so dangerous; it was what it meant. Leviathan was much more powerful than anyone had ever guessed.

Leviathan had never show this kind of fine control with his hydrokinesis before. In the briefings she'd been in that had talked about him, it had been hypothesized that he simply couldn't do things with any sort of fine control.

Apparently everyone had been wrong.

The rain came faster, now, and it began to pelt people painfully. I saw blood coming up from the skin of several people who hadn't gotten under the shields in time.

The streams of water were moving to follow a dozens of people at once, moving with an unerring accuracy, and Leviathan was still more than ten miles a way. That meant that he not only had incredibly fine control of water, but he had an inhuman ability to multitask. He could sense people from that far away, presumably through the water in their bodies, and he could guide water to attack, all while continuing to pull whatever superheated mist from the air and turning it into rain.

Water could only get to boiling hot; after that it changed form into something else. Somehow he was forcing all those droplets of water together, creating water that was unnaturally hot.

Could he have heated the water on his own without the power my Ki had exerted? I couldn't know that; however, he was using the energy I had given against everyone.

Even worse, I could feel the ground rumbling beneath us.

Legend groaned.

"There's a massive underground aquifer beneath the city. If he gets access to that he can sink the whole city."

I stared at him and tried to imagine it. He didn't have to fight any of us at all to destroy the city; all he needed was to manipulate its natural geography.

All thoughts of trying Alexandria's plan went out the window. Leviathan was playing serious ball now, not playing like he had in previous attacks.

A woman screamed, and a moment later I saw beads of water forming on her skin. I couldn't see where they were coming from, but she was screaming as though she was dying. A moment later she fell over, and her body began to shrivel like a raisin left out in the sun. It was only a matter of seconds before the body turned to ash, blowing away in the wind.

Now it was a man screaming, and the water was being drained from his body even faster than the woman's had. At this rate, no defender would be left, and no one was even going to get a chance to defend themselves.

Leviathan was safe in the water, and people were dying. Yet even now I suspected he was playing. If he could drain one person of water, it was likely that he could drain everyone at once. Instead he was drawing it out like this for the maximum amount of pain and horror.

Was he actually sadistic, or did this serve a greater purpose for his master?

Alexandria thought that these things were undoubtedly creations of Scion, part of his plan to give powers to people and feed off our creativity in using them. It seemed that like the Devil, Scion didn't have the ability to create, only destroy, so he depended on others to create strategies for him.

One day he'd take back all the powers that he'd been given, and with it knowledge of every crafty stratagem, every dirty underhanded tactic that humans could come up with. It would make him even more impossible to fight on the next planet he did this to.

If the purpose of this was to trigger as many people as possible, then it was likely that he was doing this inside the Endbringer shelters too. The thought of the helpless horror the people inside would be experiencing, more than even was usual for Endbringer attacks, because people would be inexplicably dying _right next to them_ made me sick.

In a way this was my fault. If I hadn't killed Behemoth, then Leviathan would still be pretending, keeping himself limited to lesser attacks designed to give heroes hope, to keep them fighting.

I took a deep breath, and then I took another. I should have worked on my ability to hold my breath more.

A moment later I exploded into motion.

Going into the ocean where Leviathan was hiding was stupid. It was in his element, and I couldn't breathe underwater. It was playing into his hands.

However, any blast strong enough to hurt Leviathan would probably create a volcano in the water strong enough to make Pompeii look like a kid's science project. I'd probably blast a good portion of the Earth's crust off the map, leaving magma to destroy the city.

Even worse, while my blasts were powerful, they weren't as fast as energy blasts should have been. The farther away I blasted at someone, the more time they had to react. An ordinary human might not be able to dodge, but underwater Leviathan was _fast._

That meant that I didn't have any choice other than to take the battle to him.

I was moving so quickly that the droplets of rain seemed to stop in midair. The entire world went silent, and it was like the only people alive were me and Shucai.

He at least was moving, even if it looked like he was suspended in molasses. He could see me, though, and I couldn't interpret his expression. Sometimes I thought the only expressions his face was capable of making was annoyed, angry and hateful.

A tick the the clock later and I was in the water. I was halfway to Leviathan when the water began to close in on me, grasping me like a fist. Leviathan tried to tighten the water around me, but even with his power water could only be compressed by so much. That's why it made such a good cutting instrument.

It was having an effect, though. The water in front of me was getting thicker and thicker, and now I was moving almost as slowly as Shucai.

It didn't matter though; I was on the monster before it could respond, and a moment later we were out of the water and into the air.

Leviathan struggled in my grasp, but he wasn't nearly as strong as his brother. I closed my eyes and focused., and a moment later the entire world shimmered around the both of us.

We were in the middle of an endless desert. I had been here before, although it was on the western end of a desert the size of a continent. This was on the eastern edge, and below was the Ki signature I had latched onto.

I grinned and a moment later I pushed us downward into the fire.

I'd been wanting a rematch with Ash Beast.

We both fell, and I could feel Leviathan desperately trying to pull the water from my body. It didn't work; I felt a little dry, but he didn't pull enough from me to be more than an inconvenience.

I shoved Leviathan in. Even a more than a hundred times as strong and durable as I had been when I'd been burned to the bone, the fire hurt. It burned the outer layers of Leviathan off as well.

Of course, it wouldn't be enough to get down to the core, but it would save me some work. Leviathan struggled in my grasp, and for a moment I thought I had him.

Ash Beast's fire went out, and what was left was a naked man with a bot belly. He was balding, and his neck was turned at an unnatural level. His skull was crushed, and there was viscera on Leviathan's tail.

Leviathan twisted out of my grasp, and he landed on the sand.

My arms were burned, but otherwise I was unhurt. It reminded me of the reason that I had come here in the first place. I'd had two goals; protect my home city and follow Alexandria's advice if I could.

As I floated above Leviathan I took a deep breath and I powered down.

I stared at Leviathan, and I gestured toward him, the "come at me" gesture.

He was in the air before I even had a chance to finish, and whereas before he had been the one who was moving slow, now I was the one who was at a disadvantage. I felt claws ripping through my costume and leaving rents in my skin. A tail lashed out and slammed me in the side of the head.

Since when could Leviathan fly?

It took me a moment to realize that he wasn't flying. It was just a leap, and once he got his claws into me I was the one supporting us both.

Droplets of my blood floated into the air and immediately launched themselves into my eyes, leaving my vision coated in a red haze that made it hard to see anything.

Leviathan was slashing at me and I had no doubt that if he'd had a mouth he'd have been trying to bite me as well.

I screamed and shot Ki into his hip. That wasn't where his core was; that was at the base of his tail. It was one of the limbs he was using to hurt me, though, and if I could cut it off I could incapacitate him.

He twisted out of the way of my blast, which went soaring over the horizon.

I punched him in the face, and a moment later the Ki came roaring back, controlled by my will and flattening into a disc. It hit him before he had a chance to move, and it bit deeply into his leg before it fizzled out.

He kept clawing, and it occurred to me that if I could make a disk out of Ki, then there were other ways I could use it too. I concentrated; which was hard when you have thirty feet of snarling monster clawing at you.

I shoved him away, and a moment later a cylinder of ki formed in my hand.

It was a sword of light, but it would cut like the disc. I had no training in using swords, but if I survived the day I would get some. This was brilliant; it was damaging, but unlike the blasts I used, it was unlikely to destroy entire cities.

It was compact and contained, and it was deadly.

Leviathan turned and started running east. He was heading for the red Sea, even though that was two hundred miles away.

I wiped the blood from my eyes, and I pelted the sand with blasts of energy. I kept careful control of the blasts, and when they missed I had them turn and follow him, much like the droplets of water had followed his victims.

They hit, and they always hit the same spot.

As I flew in to attack him again, water exploded all around me. Leviathan had apparently been pulling water from deep within the ground, and now I felt myself gag as I swallowed water.

The water formed a globe around my head, and suddenly I couldn't breathe. I tried to fly away, but the water still followed me.

Desperately, I held my breath and blasted myself in the face with ki, hoping to vaporize the water long enough to get a breath. My face blistered and burned, and suddenly I couldn't see anything.

I felt to the surface of the sand, and I realized suddenly that there was a good chance that I might not make it out alive. I tried to concentrate to become Super Saiyen, but focusing was hard.

Golden light flared all around me, but the water was already reforming around my head.

I could focus now that extraneous emotions were gone, and with cold clarity I flew upward. It was a matter of a moment to see the sky around me turn black and a moment later the water that was surrounding my head began to freeze. It should have evaporated away almost instantly, which is what I had been hoping for, but somehow Leviathan had increased the surface tension to the point that it was staying in place.

There was one other thing I could do.

It was a matter of a moment's concentration, and suddenly I was beside Amy, who was healing a woman whose skin was blistered and bubbling over.

The water around my head splashed to the floor. As powerful as Leviathan was, there were limits to his range. If this hadn't worked I would have tried some of the Capes I had met in Hawaii.

She turned to me, and a moment later she turned to the woman and said, "I'm sorry."

A moment later her hands were on me, and I could feel the pain receding.

"Is it done?" she asked shortly.

"I'm still working on it," I admitted. "But I've got him on the run."

I was going to have to be smarter if I was going to fight him, or I was going to have to kill him so quickly that he didn't have time to respond. As Panacea continued to focus on me, I thought about Dad's shield.

It wouldn't work on a large area, but what if I constricted it to something really small, like around my head? Leviathan might still be able to manipulate the moisture emitted by my breath, but it wouldn't be a lot; it would keep him from drowning me.

I'd be limited to the air inside the shield, but it would still be better than nothing. It wasn't like I was quite as dependent on air as a normal person.

I felt power surging into me, and I grinned at her. "Thanks for topping me up."

"Your eyeballs were leaking," she said dryly.

I shrugged.

Blasting myself in the face had been an act of desperation. If I hadn't gone more than full power it was possible that I wouldn't have gotten the water.

A moment later I was back.

On land Leviathan wasn't that fast, maybe a hundred miles an hour but much faster when he sprinted. He'd been making a beeline for the red sea, but it wasn't going to be enough.

I formed the shield around my head. It probably looked stupid, but if it worked it wouldn't matter.

He vanished beneath the sand, as though that would matter. I could follow his Ki signature as easily as he could follow my water. Concealment was an inconvenience, especially now.

I plunged into the sand, and although it left me effectively blind, I was glad to find that the bubble around my head was actually effective. I reached out and grabbed for Leviathan. I felt his claws slashing my arm.

Unfortunately his water sense seemed to be a lot more accurate than my Ki sense. Because the core was the only part of him that was real, I couldn't sense his arms or legs or tail. He on the other hand could seemingly tell exactly where all parts of me were.

He moved in and hit me, and then he moved out again, guerrilla attacks that left me bloody and bruised but that left him unwounded.

I summoned my sword and I felt it bite deeply.

He couldn't sense Ki at all!

I flashed into the air a moment later and I opened my force helmet for a moment to get a gasp of air.

A moment later I turned Super Saiyen for moment, gathered my power and I lashed out. This was a wide spread beam, but it wasn't a Ka Me Ha Me Ha.

It exploded out from me, and a moment later the desert was scoured clean, a hundred and fifty feet of sand suddenly in the wind, the largest sandstorm the world had ever seen.

It didn't matter. Leviathan was revealed, and that was all it took.

I was back fighting him even as massive amounts of sand

I grinned.

A moment later, I was fighting him again.

It was easier now that I had seen Panacea, but with luck I might get one or two more boosts before I ended him. His death was a foregone conclusion, even though he was already drawing up water from the aquifers below, and I could see storm clouds gathering in the sky.

There was no one here to get hurt, and I had all the time in the world to fight him. I was going to enjoy this.

I was even able to reform the shield around my head into something that filtered out most of the sand, although I'd have to go back to solid if he got tricky with the water again.

Being able to make a shield that would filter oxygen from water was probably beyond me. I'd have to work with Armsmaster when I got back to see if it was possible.

If it was, I might just go exploring for sunken treasure one day, once the oceans were safe again.


	65. Interlude: Aftereffects

"She killed Leviathan," Assault said. "Isn't that the important thing?"

"I'm not sure the people of Europe would agree with you," Piggot said. "Considering that they have been dealing with floods of superheated rain for the past two weeks. How many deaths have there been?"

"How many deaths did she prevent?" Assault asked. "That tidal wave would have killed a third of a million people; compared to that a few thousand people isn't much."

"Arguably she saved millions," Armsmaster added. "Given that Leviathan would have kept on killing, possibly for years."

"She didn't even really kill the Ash Beast; whatever Leviathan did to him wore off and he regenerated and he's back to wandering around," Piggot said. "Although throwing Leviathan at him wasn't the worst idea she's ever had. It actually seemed like a nice touch."

They were all silent for a moment.

"But given what happened in the Sahara...you can see how people might be concerned. She and Leviathan created a lake the size of Rhode Island, and it has already started to affect the weather patters. Apparently it's being fed by underground springs, and no one knows what the end results will be."

"It could be good," Assault said. "The Sahara wasn't always a desert."

"But that's not how weather works," Piggot insisted. "If you affect one thing, it affects things in other places. You make one country green, and another country becomes a desert."

"It's not as simple and clear cut as that,"Armsmaster said.

"But no one has a computer model for what effects any of this is going to have on the climate... or the fact that she has covered the Middle East in sandstorms that are likely to blot out the sun for weeks. They are already talking about the possibility that it's going to create a famine there if plants don't get enough sunlight."

"If she is able to ruin the world climate, it is possible that the reverse might also be true," Armsmaster said. "It would require a statistical model to gauge the effects of any particular action, but I suspect that she could actually stop droughts, stop floods, even mitigate the effects of earthquakes through the application of enough force in the right places."

"And risk unintended consequences further down the line," Piggot said. "There's a reason that we don't let genetic tinkers run amok. They like to claim that they'll make the world a paradise, with cheap food and medical cures for everybody, but one slip up and you've got a zombie plague."

"Or just a garden variety plague," Assault said. "Still, if killing an Endbringer means that people are going to starve, shouldn't we just give them food until they get back on their feet? You can't be saying that she did anything wrong by killing Leviathan and Behemoth."

Piggot shook her head, and then she scowled. "No. But she deliberately fought him in her unenhanced state so she could get stronger. She came back to Panacea, what, three times already?"

"She says she's ten times as strong as Alexandria in her unenhanced state," Armsmaster said. "And five hundred times as strong as a Super Saiyen."

"Why is she still trying to get stronger?" Piggot asked. "Two of the Endbringers are dead, and she can't imagine that we're going to let her fight the last one. If the Simurgh got control of her, she would be more dangerous than any Endbringer ever."

"There are seventeen unknown Endbringer, each with unknown powers. Miss Hebert seems to be concerned that the new ones might be even stronger than the ones we know. If that is the case, then maximizing her strength isn't just prudent, it's necessary."

Assault glanced over at Armsmaster. The man seemed unperturbed by the events of the last two weeks.

The thought that the Endbringers they had already faced had been starter opponents, with each one coming after being even stronger than the last made a horrifying sense. If the Endbringers had been sent by someone, perhaps to test Earth and its parahumans, it might be that killing even one of them triggered a progression of events leading to the emergence of the others, culminating in an end boss so powerful that the world would not survive.

It was just as possible that the Endbringers were here by random chance, in which case some would be weaker and some would be stronger. But given the variations in power between the known endbringers, it seemed likely that the new ones would have exotic powers.

"We can't continue depending on a fourteen year old girl to save the world. She's getting so powerful that an errant sneeze will blow a city off the map," Piggot said.

It was an exaggeration, but now much of one.

"She'll be fifteen in less than a month," Assault said.

"I'd feel better about that if she was someone like Vista," Piggot said. "But she only gives lip service to obeying anyone and she doesn't respect anyone who isn't a fighter, not really."

"Leet isn't a fighter, and she tolerates him," Armsmaster said.

"Tolerates," Piggot said. "Like me and the President of the United States. She tolerates us like you'd tolerate a yappy dog."

"Eventually she'll run out of stronger people to fight," Assault said. "And she'll have to go back to regular life."

"She's never going to have a regular life. Did you know the Chinese have filed a formal protest with the United States government?"

"Oh?"

"Apparently they believe that she removed the Endbringer so that Shucai would not have the opportunity to attain Super Saiyen status."

"That's... probably not true," Assault said uneasily.

"They think that the Protectorate taught her how to teleport specifically so that she could do something like this."

"They're just rattling their sabers, hoping that the politicians will give them concessions to keep them quiet," Assault said. "It's not like it hasn't worked before."

"Master Shucai went home."

"Good riddance," Assault said. "The others have stayed though."

"I'm not worried about them," Piggot said. "What I'm worried about is what will happen when he finally does attain that form?"

"Who says that's going to happen at all?" Assault asked.

"Until the four minute miles was accomplished in 1954, it was considered impossible," Armsmaster said absently. He was looking at a data pad. "Since that time there have been more than fourteen hundred non-parahuman athletes who have accomplished it."

Assault had a sense that he wasn't reading this information off the data pad. He was looking at something else.

Armsmaster looked up. "Given the abilities shown by Miss Hebert and the others, it's only a matter of time before someone else accesses those powers. Most likely it will be Shucai, and my estimation would be that it will happen soon. Given the power increases the others have been experiencing over the past two weeks, it is possible to extrapolate that they might reach that point within five years."

"And then there will be seven gods striding the Earth, with six of them working for a totalitarian regime," Piggot said. "Who said that training them was a good idea?"

"Uncle Sam," Assault said. "Of course, that was before we lost our second Endbringer."

"And how long do you think she will live after the last Endbringer is gone?" Piggot asked. "There's evidence that Shucai has been systematically eliminating the other members of their...subgroup for decades, likely at the insistence of the previous Chinese government."

"You're suggesting that they will kill her?" Assault asked. "How?"

"There are esoteric powers that will kill almost anyone," Piggot said. "And given how much she eats, she could ingest massive amounts of poison in a single meal."

"Leaving Shucai and possibly the others as the only remaining people on the planet with that kind of power. Won't our side retaliate?"

"Yes, but they'll likely be better protected. You saw what happened when she was trying to be careful. How much damage could someone with her kind of power do to the United States if they _weren't_ careful?"

"A deliberate attack?" Armsmaster asked. "They'd have know that we'd open the Birdcage in an event like that. It's the reason it was created instead of simply putting them all to death; as a last ditch fail safe in the event of disaster."

"In a situation where people like the Slaughterhouse Nine are actually the better option," Assault said gloomily. "You think that's what's going to happen?"

"Either the girl will be killed by one of the Endbringers, or she and Shucai will fight, and they'll end up destroying the world. If they don't, then the rest of the world will go to war over them. I don't see a lot of good coming out of this."

"Well, the fishing industry is likely to come back," Assault said. He grinned weakly.

It was true. Information had been traded between Aleph and Earth Bet, and years of people staying off the seas had allowed the fisheries to rebound in incredible ways, leaving the seas much more vibrant and full of life than where the industry had been allowed to continue unabated.

"Well, that will be a comfort to the fifteen people living in the post apocalypse," Piggot said. "At least there will be enough fish!"

* * *

"I thought telepathy was impossible," Hebert said.

Sophia wondered why she was here at all. Hebert had turned out to be an incredible bad ass, now that she'd bagged two Endbringers, but she still chose to spend her time with losers.

Uber wasn't so bad. He looked good, and he wasn't a bad fighter when he tried, but Leet... Leet made Greg Vedar look cool. He was an idiot plain and simple, and if it wasn't for the fact that he had all the best toys, Sophia would have thought he was completely worthless.

He did have good toys though.

"This isn't telepathy," Leet insisted. "It works through actual scientific principals that... I'm not really clear on. I was working on it last night while I was drunk on Red Bulls and Wild Turkey... did you know Winnie dumped me?"

Sophia gritted her teeth.

He'd mentioned it four times already.

"She said the long distance thing wasn't going to work out... like it's really that far between here and Hawaii. It's not like I don't have a teleporter."

"Right," Hebert said. "And it has nothing to do with the fact that you posted her pictures online and bragged to everyone you know, including me and Sophia; some of those weren't meant to be shared."

"She said she was cool with that!" Leet protested.

"She lied," Hebert said.

Sophia nodded emphatically. If a boyfriend had done that to her, she'd have gutted him and left him in an alley somewhere to bleed out. The fact that the other woman hadn't done anything but drop the relationship made her think less of her.

Even Hebert would have found some way to get back at him, and she'd actually forgiven Sophia, more or less.

"So what's the point of this thing?" Sophia asked. "Instead of, say, a radio."

"I'm glad you asked!" Leet said. "First, you need a receiver to work a radio. With this little baby, you could actually communicate with everybody in an area no matter what they are doing."

The thought of Leet's voice in her head while she was doing anything intimate... or actually anything at all made Sophia shudder.

"Also, if Sparta here can learn to teleport just by having it done to her, maybe she can do this too. Maybe I just have to show her the way."

"A way that doesn't involve internet porn?" Sophia asked. "You know, sending those to minors could get you in serious trouble."

"Those were just lingerie shots," Leet protested. "You can see more on the beach."

"Still not cool," Uber said. "I tried telling you the minute you sent them to me."

"I'd already sent it to everybody else on my list," Leet said. "What could I do."

"Not sent sexy pictures of your girlfriend to eight hundred and ninety thousand people," Hebert said dryly.

"That was an accident. I only meant to send it out to my eighty nine closest friends," Leet said. "Not everybody on my list."

"That's not any better. And why do you have almost a million people on your list?"

"That's all the people I've gotten into an argument with online," Leet said slowly. "About one thing or another. I've got a program that keeps a list."

"So you've talked shit to almost a million people... in person," Sophia said. She stared at Leet for a moment. "I... kind of respect that."

"You would," Hebert said disgustedly. "You aren't going to make any friends if you keep insulting people."

"I don't insult people!" Leet insisted. "I just tell them why they are wrong."

Hebert scowled. "So how does this thing work?"

"You wear it like a tiara," Leet said. He was easy to distract, which was fortunate, or Sophia would have strangled him already.

"And then I can hear people's thoughts."

"No!" Leet said. "You can't read minds. You can only project."

"And how is this supposed to be useful to me?"

"The next time you need to tell people to evacuate, say when you decide you want to flirt with that Chinese asshole, you can reach everybody."

"He's older than my Dad!" Herbert said.

"He doesn't look it," Sophia said. She grinned at the expression on Hebert's face. She could blow an entire country off the map, but she still had trouble with a little friendly ribbing. It was kind of cute.

"I'm going to have to..." Hebert said, and then her head snapped around.

"Crap."

"What?"

"He just did it," Hebert said.

"Shucai?" Sophia asked. From the look on her face it couldn't be anyone else.

"He just went Super Saiyen in China."

"Isn't that a good thing?" Sophia asked.

Hebert hadn't talked to her about it, but Sophia wasn't dumb. She knew that the bigwigs in the Protectorate were worried that Hebert was going to try to take over, or something stupid like that, but Sophia knew better.

Hebert was crazy about getting stronger, but there was a certain desperation in her eyes that didn't go with being the most powerful person to have ever existed in the history of the world. She should have been confident, but instead she was worried.

Likely it meant that she thought that there were stronger opponents ahead, most likely the Endbringers that Hebert insisted were coming. If there were going to be worse Endbringers than Behemoth, then they would need everyone they could get.

"You think he'd really help?" Hebert asked. "He's just in it for him. He'd probably just shoot me in the back."

"Wouldn't that just make you stronger?" Sophia asked.

Hebert brightened suddenly. "That's actually true. Now that he's not so weak, training will go a lot better!"

"So you don't think he's going to try to kill you," Sophia asked.

"Oh, he will," Hebert asked. "That's what's going to make it work."

Right.

Sophia found herself sharing a look with Leet, and the fact that they were both on the same page made her a little uncomfortable. Hebert would do anything if you called it training; she was crazy when it came to getting stronger.

Maybe she could be convinced that doing Sophia's homework for her was training?

"Well, I'm off to train," Hebert said cheerfully.

"Try not to create any more natural disasters," Leet said. He hesitated. "Or if you're going to anyway, let me know where, and... can you short real estate like you can stocks?"

"No," Uber said.

"Well, if you destroy a town mostly but not too much, we can invest in reconstruction efforts and make a killing," Leet said. "But if you wipe it off the map and kill everybody it's a no go."

Sophia stared at him. For a loser, he was surprisingly bloodthirsty.

Uber groaned. "We're already making a killing off of the Behemoth videos. They're making a movie and we sold them the rights."

"Yeah," Leet said. "But we'd have made triple that for the Leviathan fight if someone hadn't decided to teleport off to the desert."

"And then your lab would have been wiped off the map," Hebert said. "Or flooded at the least. I can't think that would have done a lot of good for the electronics."

"Fine, blame me for wanting to make an honest dollar," Leet said. "It would have been epic."

"So why don't you film me and Shucai training," Hebert asked. "You could probably sell it to the Chinese market."

"Really?"

"Sure," Hebert said. "For thirty percent of the gross."

"The net maybe," Leet said. "I've got bills."

"And you'll end up pretending like you've gone in the hole just so you don't have to pay me."

Since when did Hebert care about money? Sophia stared at her.

"Fine," Leet said.

"I'm trying to buy Amy her own house," Hebert explained. "Turned out the Dallon house was a rental."

"Why?"

"She's like the most important person in my life," Hebert said. "You know who I'd be without her?"

They were all silent.

"Shucai," she said. "He's actually got to heal from all the crap he does to himself naturally, and that's probably why he's so grumpy all the time."

"I think he was born grumpy." Leet said.

"Well, he's here," Hebert said. "I guess I better go out and play."


	66. Curse

"You're wrong about it not being telepathy," I told Leet.

"What?" he asked. He stared at me.

"You said it wasn't telepathy when you gave this to me," I said. I handed him the circlet. "I've been practicing with it, and when I do it, it's telepathy."

"What are you talking about?"

" _I can read your mind_ ," I said without moving my lips.

The color drained from his face as he stared at me. He looked like he'd seen a ghost.

I could guess what he was worried about. Looking inside someone's mind was even worse than looking at their browser history, and I suspected that his mind was somewhere that I wouldn't want to examine very closely anyway.

" _But I won't_."

It had taken two months, but I'd finally managed to get a grip on the whole telepathy thing. I'd hoped that I'd be able to use it against Shucai; the ability to read an opponent's mind in combat would make you almost unbeatable, assuming you were able to react fast enough.

Unfortunately, it seemed to be a dead end. It took too much concentration to be used in combat, and when I tried to use it in other situations, I didn't find out anything that I wanted to know.

I didn't want to know that Sophia liked Garrett's butt. I didn't want to know that Piggot thought that I was going to be assassinated by the Chinese soon. Seeing the petty rivalries and desires of my classmates at school had alternately bored and revolted me.

It was part of the reason I hadn't really made any friendships at school. Knowing that someone had ulterior motives in getting to know you really took the shine off a friendship. Most of the kids at school knew I was friends with Amy, and the ones who wanted her help for free sometimes tried to suck up to me.

Mind reading really was more trouble than it was worth.

I really didn't want to know that Shucai actually wanted to kill me. I'd assumed it was the same sort of semi-friendly rivalry I had with him, using him as a means to propel myself to ever higher levels of power.

He really couldn't tolerate the fact that I was stronger than him. Fortunately, even after his transformation, I was ten times stronger than Shucai.

His skills, of course, made our battles afterwards a lot closer than they had been. The fact that he wanted to kill me wasn't something that he concealed very well, but I think that it actually made training more effective. I could never let my guard down, and he hit hard enough to really hurt.

Two months after he'd first returned, I was fifty percent stronger, and he was twice as strong. It confirmed a theory that I'd had that fighting opponents who were more powerful was the way to get stronger the fastest.

Obviously this wasn't sustainable. At the rate we were going it would only take him fourteen months to be as strong as I was, and he would be strong enough to actually kill me long before that. I was getting better with my fighting skills, but he was really good, and it was only a matter of time before I was really in trouble.

"You can really read minds," he said slowly.

"It's not exactly the way your gadget did it," I said. "But I can if I have to. It's no big deal."

"Mind reading is impossible," he said. "It can't be done. That's what everyone has always said, and there has never been a parahuman who has actually managed it. Think about that... how many parahumans are in the world..."

"Five hundred thousand, more or less," I said. "Not counting people who have somehow managed to keep their abilities a secret."

"You could tell exactly how many..."

"I'm not going to count," I said. We'd had this argument before. "It wouldn't work anyway. They keep moving around and until I've met them I can't really tell one from the other."

There were some notable exceptions. Those who were tremendously stronger I could tell; the sleeper practically flew off the map. Still, it would have been like counting seemingly identical ants milling around a nest.

Finding a few hidden parahumans in the country would be a snap. In the middle of thousands of others, it was impossible.

"We'll need to talk about this a little more," he said.

"I'm not really wanting to deal with why I can do what I can do," I said. "What I want is for you to make me something that will act like an amplifier. Right now I can only talk with a few people at once, but I'll need to talk to entire cities of people."

"You could already do that with this," he said.

"This will let me talk to a city," I said. "There may come a time when I'll need to talk to more than one."

"What? Why?" he asked.

"What happens if the new Endbringers all decide to attack at once?" I asked. "Maybe they cut communications so that they can do maximum damage."

Or Scion did it.

"That's a pretty tall order," he said hesitantly.

"If anybody can do it, you can," I said. It might come in useful in other ways too. Being able to scream in someone's head might startle them. Screaming a hundred or a thousand times as loud might incapacitate.

"I'll look into it," he said. "I hear you are out of school?"

"Finally. They held us late because of the time we missed because of the Slaughterhouse attacks."

You wouldn't have thought that four hours of school a day would be trying, but my sense of urgency had been growing with every passing day. I found myself resenting any time that wasn't spent training.

It didn't help that there were rumbles about political conflict with the CUI. They'd claimed to be insulted by the fact that I hadn't been the one to help Shucai with his transformation, and they'd threatened to renege on the promises they had made in return.

Our side had pointed out that the others were getting stronger by leaps and bounds. They were actually progressing faster than either of us. I'd seen one of them bench pressing a dump truck the other day.

Now that they'd been away from their homeland for so long, they were actually beginning to relax and act like teenagers. I'd seen some of them playing video games with Garrett and Leet, something that their government definitely wouldn't have approved of.

They liked American food, and the glimpses I had of their thoughts suggested that some of them were having stray thoughts of defecting. They were worried that Shucai would kill them if they tried, and they weren't worried metaphorically.

He most likely would, and the only way to stop it would be to confront him for real.

I'd read his mind occasionally, just to see if today was the day he was finally going to try to kill me. He seemed convinced that there was another transformation even more powerful than being just a Saiyan, as though that wasn't strong enough.

He planned on springing it on me before he finally destroyed me, which was a relief; he was chasing something that was ephemeral and non-existent. He didn't even have legends to go on; why he thought there had to be another transformation I couldn't fathom.

If there was such a transformation, how would he ever get any stronger? Other than Scion there weren't any other beings to fight, other than the Endbringers, and there nature was such that either they wouldn't be that much of a threat, or they'd be deadly.

An Endbringer with Grayboy's power for example would be something that neither one of us would have any defense against. Yet another Leviathan would be easy at full power. We were massively powerful in some ways, and no stronger than anyone else in other ways... just like most parahumans.

I looked at my watch. "I'm supposed to meet with Alexandria soon. If you could build that amplifier, I'd be grateful."

"Slip me some of that cool merchandising money," Leet said. "I hear you're raking it in."

It seems like overnight T-shirts were springing up everywhere with my logo on them. My logo was on underwear, on socks, there was even a line of shoes with my Logo. I hadn't even realized that I had a logo, but it turned out it was a stylized version of my helmet, the new one that showed my hair.

Some of the T-shirts were terribly derivative. "I killed two Endbringers and all I got was this T-shirt." There was one with me shouting "I AM SPARTA!" while kicking Behemoth into a hole.

It was embarrassing to see classmates wearing T-shirts like that after school. Fortunately, Arcadia had school uniforms and so I didn't have to see it all day at school.

There were memes all over the Internet. I had a suspicion that Leet had started some of them himself. I'd overheard Garrett talking to Leet about investing in a Sparta key chain line.

Fortunately, the Protectorate hadn't forced me to participate in many publicity events. I was so famous I didn't have to.

I went to the White House and was presented the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Apparently they fast tracked the approval process, because some people thought that just standing next to me in pictures was enough to get their election campaign a bump in the polls.

"I just got my first check," I said. "And some people have been making merch without sending me a cut."

I glared at him, as though a cared.

He grinned at me unapologetically. "Allegedly."

"You know the Protectorate has a huge team of lawyers making sure that they get their cut. If they catch you they'll probably ding your holodeck payments."

"It won't happen," he said. "After all, I'm as innocent as the newborn snow."

"With pee on it," I said. "Get the amplifier built, and I won't mention anything to Piggot."

He shrugged. "I can't guarantee anything, but I'll try."

A moment later I was making my way out of his lair. I frowned and concentrated. I could fly to Alexandria, but teleporting was something that I needed to practice, and I hadn't really told her about it anyway.

I couldn't sense her.

This was something that had happened on and off. It wasn't frequent; maybe once a week and never at the same time. She would be gone from my senses from an hour, and then she would reappear in the same spot she had left.

Was she using a device to hide herself from me, or did she have some sort of mastery of Ki that she hadn't yet told me about?

Why would she try to hide from me unless there was something she was doing that I really wanted to know about.

If this was a technique like Shucai had used to hide himself from me a time of two when he tried to ambush me, there might be ways around that. I might be able to sense her if I extended my senses to their maximum extent.

I floated upward, floating over the city, and I closed my eyes. I could sense all of the most powerful beings on the planet; Scion, Eidolon, Legend, Sleeper, the Endbringers, Shucai...

No Alexandria.

I allowed the golden light to wash over me, and I closed my eyes again. I focused harder.

Still nothing.

Letting my mind drift, I reached out, and I tried to listen as hard as I could, metaphorically. It took longer than I would have thought, but eventually I thought I caught the faintest glimmer of her signature.

It was muffled, like I was looking at a candle at the other end of a football field through a hundred feet of gauze. I couldn't be sure that I was really sensing it, or if it was a figment of my imagination.

There was only one way for me to tell. If I could teleport to her, then it was real.

If there wasn't enough for me to lock onto, then likely it wasn't. I focused, and reached out mentally. It was like grasping at air, and I spent when seemed like forever trying to acquire the link.

Finally, just as I was about to give it up as just being a figment of my imagination, I felt something catch. I focused my will, and the world warped around me.

I stepped through to that space between spaces, and a moment later I found myself in a conference room.

It felt like I had suddenly gone blind.

There should have been billions of people all over the world, so much life that it was hard to distinguish one person from another unless their power was strong enough that they shone brighter than everyone else.

Now I could only sense a few hundred people scattered around different places across the earth. Many of them were in whatever building I was in now; it had to be large; there were people on every floor, and there were at least eighty floors.

The walls were all white, and there was a table in the center of the room, with large monitors against the walls.

Alexandria was standing ten feet away from me, and she was staring at me in shock. Beside her was a pretty black haired woman in a tailored black suit with a white shirt and a fedora. On her other side was a dark skinned woman wearing a lab coat.

"Taylor..." Alexandria said. "What are you doing here? How did you get here?"

She used my real name in front of two women that I didn't know. Either that was a sign of her shock, or it meant that these women were part of the Protectorate. I couldn't be sure which, unless I took a glimpse inside of their heads. I had an uneasy feeling that I wouldn't like what I saw.

After all, Alexandria had come to this place, wherever it was stealthily. No one knew she was doing it, and that meant that whatever she was doing here wasn't something that she wanted to be known.

Even after the things I'd seen from her, part of me wanted to believe that there was something there of the hero I had worshiped when I was younger It was why I hadn't looked inside of her head yet.

There were a very few people whose minds I had refused to look into. Garrett, Dad, Alexandria. These were the people I respected the most, and part of me feared losing that respect. If I did, then it was possible that I would never respect anyone ever again.

Telepathy was a curse as much as a power. It had probably already made me more cynical, and that was just from practicing with it. I doubted that I'd ever use it much.

"I figured out how to teleport," I said, forcing a smile. "And you were late for our meeting, so I came looking for you."

"You shouldn't have done that," the woman in the lab coat said.

There was a sense of menace to her words, which shouldn't have been the case considering that I was the most powerful person not only in this room, but in the entire world. Yet she seemed to think she was in control.

Well, I'd resolved not to look inside Alexandria's head, but I didn't know these people. Her words made me think that she didn't mean well for me, which meant that it might be a good idea to check.

A look in their heads made my heart sink.

Crap.

Even without looking inside her head I was finding myself disappointed in Alexandria. She had been involved in things that were dirty, much dirtier than what I already knew.

"Because you plan on killing me once I kill Scion?" I said.

I watched Alexandria carefully. I was stronger than she was now, but she was durable enough that the only way I could reliably stop her was to do enough damage to kill her. If they'd planned to kill me before it was possible that she would attack me now.

It wasn't the way they'd planned on killing me; poison, most likely, or stopping my breathing in my sleep with a power. Now that I knew the Cape they planned to use, I could probably find and kill him before we fought Scion.

The color drained from their faces.

" _I've learned how to read minds too_ ," I said, my voice echoing inside their head. " _I'm working on a way to protect myself from the Simurgh, and if I can manage that, I'll finished her off too._ "

The woman, Contessa, spoke.

"You can understand why we might be... concerned about someone with your growing power," she said.

"More than Shucai?" I asked. "He's the one who's likely to go around trying to overthrow countries."

Ah.

They planned to kill him too. They'd keep Dad and the other lesser Saiyans as insurance in case another Entity came to Earth in the future.

I stared at Contessa.

She was asking for her power to find a way to pacify me, presumably before I splattered them all against the walls of their pretty white room.

The question was whether I was willing to go along with it.


	67. Changes

"We've got plans in place to kill all of us, should it become necessary," Contessa said. "Especially after Scion is killed."

"Why?"

"Because once he dies, we are the next greatest threat to humanity," she said. "It's optimistic to even think about a post-Scion world, but it's something we have to do."

"So you plan to commit suicide?"

"Given the things some of us have done, there might be a temptation, but no. We've done what we did so that uncounted masses of humanity might have the barest sliver of a chance to live. I can't regret that."

I stared at her. She believed everything she was saying, and she'd given up her entire life for this.

She was barely a person at all. Her power was so strong that she'd been following its instructions for years. She hadn't made her own decisions in a long time.

"So why shouldn't I just continue doing what I've been doing?" I asked. "There's eighteen more Endbringers I could use to get stronger; eventually I'll get strong enough to have a chance against Scion. Why do I need you?"

"Because he will notice long before that ever happens," she said. "I can't predict exactly when, but there is a good chance that he is close to deciding that this world is too dangerous to be allowed to continue right now. You've killed two Endbringers already, and I suspect that has to be an anomaly for the civilizations they meet."

"Even if I believe you, the final fight is going to be between me and Scion. Shucai might be able to help, but I doubt that anyone else will be able to be anything else but in the way."

"We've smoothed your path so far," she said. "We can do more. We aren't the only ones with an interest in assassinating you. We've already dealt with three attempts to master or kill you."

Dealt with by killing the people who tried it. She actually had a Path dedicated to keeping me alive and independent long enough to fight Scion.

"We aren't so concerned about you in the future," she continued. "It's about the people who will try to control you, and I'm not just talking about actual masters. There will be politicians, business owners, entire countries that will be trying to get their hooks into you. It will be destabilizing."

"I can read minds," I said. "It's not like I can fall for something like that."

"All I would have to do to beat that was to never be around you," she said. "Use proxies who actually believed what they say. Maybe use two or three layers so that you can't track me back through them. If they don't know who their boss is, you can't use them to get to me."

I nodded slowly. "So what, I keep fighting only to have you kill me in the end?"

"Or we work with you," she said. She was silent for a moment. "It's strange to think about a time after Scion. Other than a few plans, we haven't actually let ourselves hope enough to actually bother with it."

"I'll tell you what," I said. "I won't kill you all, and you don't kill me. If we all survive this, maybe part of the way you can make up for some of the crap you have been doing is to actually work to make the world a better place."

She stared at me for a moment, then nodded.

"After all, there's a chance that another Entity or two would visit in the future...maybe after we're all dead. The only way to fight would be for mankind to get stronger... technologically and socially."

"We'll have to have something to do afterwards," she said. "If we don;t die. Making things actually better would be a nice change."

"You need to do something with the Case 53s, though," I said.

"All of them were volunteers," Alexandria said. "People who would have died anyway."

"So you took advantage of desperate people," I said. "People who didn't really have any other choice in order to press your agenda."

"We gave them another chance!" Alexandria said. "Which is more than the world will get if we fail. We've been getting better at the process anyway."

They thought the Case 53s distracted and repelled Scion, giving them a chance to do whatever business they were attempting under his nose. From a cold, calculating perspective I could almost understand it; if I was currently a Super Saiyan, I suspected that I wouldn't have as much of a problem with it.

Yet every one of those people were real people, with lives that had been utterly destroyed by these three people in front of me and those who worked for them. They were willing to throw anyone under the bus if it would get them one inch closer to their goals.

The only thing that kept me from killing them was the fact that they would be willing to throw themselves under the bus just as much as anyone else. They were fanatics, but the cause was one to be fanatical about.

"Which is why most of the people you've got locked away have been there for a long time. That's not ok."

From what I was reading in their minds, some of the people had been there for years. Alexandria thought that the Case 53s were growing less monstrous, and maybe that was true. It didn't matter; the important thing was that they treated their failures with as much dignity and humanity as possible.

They weren't doing that.

She and Alexandria glanced at each other. "Some of them are too dangerous to be allowed back into the world."

"Then put them on a different world! I know you can do that. Give them a place to live that isn't just a prison cell!" I said. "What do you think will happen if they get loose? You think they won't try to kill you? I would."

Keeping a large population of people who wanted to kill you in your basement seemed particularly stupid to me. All it would take was one mistake, a prisoner getting loose and opening the other cells, and you'd have a massacre.

The only way they'd be able to make it worse was to have a huge red button that opened all the cells at the same time. Even if they chose to keep them on the same world, they had an entire empty world to play with. Why not put the containment facilities in another continent?

"They knew the risks," Alexandria began.

"Of becoming a monster," I said. "Not of being locked away forever. Give them a life; it doesn't have to be a great life, just the best life that you can manage. You owe them that much. You've got access to multiple worlds; why not put them on an empty one where they can't hurt anyone. "

They hadn't even bothered to give the prisoners access to television or books. Even hardened criminals in prisons got that much. The only thing that surprised me was that they hadn't simply euthanized their failures.

Ah. They'd thought that even the worst of the Case 53s might be useful in the future and they were unwilling to get rid of even the slightest chance. They were also doing some pretty unethical experiments on them.

It disgusted me how they were treating them. I could understand their desperation, giving people powers. From what I was reading from their minds, those powers didn't have the intrinsic limitations that the ones actually given out by the Entities had.

To their minds that meant that there was a chance that at least one of those powers might be something that could actually be used to stop Scion.

Some of those limitations were designed to help the user not hurt himself though, and they mixed the powers in ways that had never been intended. This led to... mistakes.

"Just because you are trying to save the world doesn't mean you have to be a dick," I said. "Making hard decisions is great and all, but it's not quite as noble when you aren't the one paying the price."

I was a fourteen year old lecturing older people; this shouldn't be happening.

"I suppose it wouldn't hurt," Alexandria said slowly.

"What do you think they'll do if the power ever goes out?" I asked. "Bring you cake and roses? If I was them I'd get a little revenge, which might not be the best thing if we're in the middle of fighting."

Contessa stared at me, and I could feel her asking her power if I was right. After a moment she nodded.

That was the problem with having the answer to all the world's questions in your head. You only go the answers to questions you actually asked. If you had blind spots, then things would get away from you because it never occurred to you to ask the question.

Sometimes it was good to actually do your own thinking.

"That's why we need to work together," Contessa said. "No one person knows enough to do everything, and if you've got a vision of how the world should be... afterward, then we are the people who have the resources to make that happen. We've got the money and the political connections to do a lot."

I didn't bother to ask why they hadn't already worked to make the world a better place. People triggered whenever things were bad. More triggers meant more soldiers in the battle that they assumed was coming.

It was a variation of their Endbringer strategy. Get enough warm bodies to throw at a problem, and hope that eventually something would stick. They didn't have a plan that would work beyond that; they were crippled by the fact that Scion and the Endbringers were mostly invisible to Contessa's power.

The strange thing about Contessa was that she was absolutely certain that she was right. She'd sacrificed her entire life toward this one end; I could see that she had no semblance of a private life. Her every waking moment was devoted to this singular, solitary goal.

She'd given up romance, friendships, even the relief of a simple day laying in the sun all so that this singular goal would be achieved.

The horrible thing was that I could see that I wasn't that different.

I hadn't mutilated people intentionally, but I hadn't made any friends either. Those I had made were people who were useful to me.

Would I have given Garrett a second thought if he hadn't been able to train me? Leet without his inventions wouldn't be someone I even considered spending time with. I'd avoided Greg Vedar after all, and he was essentially a somewhat more socially awkward Leet without the useful parts.

I liked Amy, but she was essential to my growth in power.

The only person in my entire life that I spent time with who wasn't useful for my getting stronger was Dad.

I'd avoided making friends in school even before I'd peeked inside of their minds, because they weren't useful to me. I hadn't even tried to make friends because I'd been preoccupied with my goal of getting stronger.

Contessa wanted to kill Scion and save the world. I wanted to get stronger and save the world. We'd both sacrificed everything else in the pursuit of that.

Would I end up like her?

She was a shell of a person; it had been so long since she'd done anything for herself that she didn't even remember what it was like. Was that what I would end up like?

It was so easy to get wrapped up in my competition with Shucai, that everything else just fell away. I didn't have to worry about people betraying me if I just decided that I didn't really need anyone else.

If I was always alone, I didn't have to worry that I'd give my heart to someone, only to have them rip it out of my chest and feed it to me.

Maybe that was why I had accepted Sophia. I knew what she was, and in a way she was a safer kind of a friend. I would never trust her fully, and that meant that I wasn't in any real danger of getting hurt by her.

Would I have made the same choices Contessa had, if I had been the one with her powers? It made me ashamed to think that I might have. The fate of the world was at stake.

Yet, like Sophia, I knew that I couldn't fully trust her either. She'd turn against me on a dime if she thought that it would increase the world's chance of survival even by one chance in one thousand. Afterwards we would have to see.

Hopefully her power would tell her that working with me was better than working without me.

If not, then I'd have to defend myself, and I suspected that wouldn't go very well for them. I could see that realization in her eyes as well.

Had letting me read her mind been part of Contessa's path after all? That way lay madness; assuming that everything was the work of a conspiracy was the work of people who couldn't believe that sometimes random events ruled the world.

Nobody, not even Cauldron had their fingers in all the pies, even if they tried to do something different.

"So are you going to show me the other entity or not?" I asked. "I know you want to, and it would be helpful to know what I'll be fighting."

Contessa nodded, and turned to the wall. "Door."

As we passed through the portal that appeared, I kept my senses open. The way he was using to slip through the dimensions was different from my own, but there were ways I could use what I was seeing to make it easier. I'd have to ask them to place people I knew in different dimensions so that I could get used to moving to others.

We stepped out into a garden and I stared in disgust.

"This is what Scion is?" I asked.

"He's much larger, we presume," Contessa said. "We've been mining the body for Agents for a long time, and we think she'd shed many of her Agents before we were able to kill her."

"And Agents are what they are made up of," I asked.

She nodded. "They shed them when they first come to a planet, giving them out to people who will use them to fight. Our thinkers believe that they don't have any creativity themselves; that's why they rely on other species to come up with strategies."

"So he's going to have all the strategies of an unknown number of species," I said. "How can anybody fight against that?"

"Sometimes having too many powers can be just as crippling as having too few," she said. "Imagine that you had ten thousand different powers. How many of them would you really use?"

"Whichever ones were the most generally useful, I suppose," I said. "And specific powers when I had time to think of them."

"Eidolon has that problem," she said. "He potentially has every parahuman power, but he tends to rely on old favorites far more than he should. It's difficult to create strategy around that many powers."

"Still, he could pull out something like Grey Boy's power and end it right away," I said. "I'm less worried about his sheer power than about his versatility. It's the exotic effects that I'm going to have to worry about the most."

"That's why you shouldn't fight him alone," she said. "We're trying to work out ways to protect you from the most likely weapons he'll use. Fortunately he won't have access to all of his powers; he's given out a lot of them. He'll be much reduced from what he is at full power."

I nodded.

"You realize this means that I'm in charge, don't you?" I asked. "You could possibly try to kill me and go with Shucai, but he's an even worse choice than I am, and then you wouldn't even need a spare. I on the other hand..."

"Don't particularly need us," Contessa said. She nodded. "I know. The others won't like it, but the Path says that this actually increases our chances."

She believed it too; I was checking.

"I think you can make things a little easier for me, and more importantly that you can redeem yourselves afterwards by helping to rebuild the world or I'd kill all of you right now."

Contessa nodded slightly. "Our usual methods wouldn't work well with you."

"You can't kill me because you need me. If I'm mastered I'm probably not going to be as creative of a fighter and I'll probably lose. If you try to kidnap Dad, I can find him anywhere... and I'll murder every last one of you."

I would too, and I think she knew that.

"So from now on, you work for me," I said. "And we're going to make some changes around here."


	68. Grindstone

"Again?" Amy asked.

I had burns all over my face and hands. I had been testing myself against the Ash Beast, repeatedly dipping my face and body into his fires as a way of getting stronger. It was getting less and less effective, even though I wasn't in my advanced form.

"How are you enjoying your new house?" I asked pointedly.

She sighed.

Buying her a new house had been a stroke of genius. People tended to follow through when they felt obligated to you, and this hadn't really cost me all that much. I'd hired lawyers to help her get emancipated, and that meant she could actually own her own property.

"I really shouldn't keep growing your hair back, not if you are going to keep doing this," she said.

Shrugging, I said "It's a way of getting ahead of Shucai. It's driving him crazy how I'm getting stronger without him knowing how."

Five times in the fire and I'd barely doubled my strength. It almost wouldn't have been worth it except for Shucai's mounting frustration. He hated it when I was a lot stronger one day than I was the next. If I was fighting and killing major enemies he should have heard about it, in the news of through the CUI's network of spies in the Protectorate.

More importantly than the strength boost was the boost to my toughness. My resistance to fire and energy attacks had more than doubled, which would be vital in fighting Scion. My next step would be to have me and Shucai trying to blast each other to death. As he was weaker than me, it would only make his power growth compared to mine increase even faster, though.

The one thing he was right about was that I wanted to keep him behind me. Having him wanting to kill me was keeping me on my toes. Having him able to kill me was something else entirely.

Out training had gotten so intense that it was doing outsized damage to the world around us. We'd been sent back to the Sahara, and there had been protests in the Middle East because the sandstorms we were creating had gotten even worse.

Keeping this in between me and Amy had been ideal for keeping it a secret.

"It won't be many more times anyway," I said. "I had to stay in for fifteen minutes this time to get burned even this much. I was actually able to have a conversation with Ash Beast."

"Oh?" Amy asked.

"Yeah. His real name is Farouk. He was an insurance salesman in Cairo before he triggered. He can't control his power and so he just kind of wanders around. I don't think he even understands what he's doing to people."

"That's horrible," Amy said.

"He thinks he's in hell and once I told him he was still alive, he begge3d me to kill him."

"Did you?" Amy asked. "That's it, by the way. You're right about the damage being superficial. I doubt you're getting much out of it these days."

I nodded. "I don't think I'm going to do it again, not unless I'm just going to talk to Farouk. I'm going to talk to some people to see if we can do something for him. I'm thinking that if we can get him to stay in one place, we can use him to generate free power. He might go for it if we can find a way to make his life better."

"That's...not terrible," Amy said.

"What about the things I asked you about?" I asked. "Have you given it any thought?"

"To actually solving world hunger?" she asked. "I don't know. It seems like the kind of thing that could get you Birdcaged. The PRT is really strict about those kinds of modifications."

"I've got some political clout these days," I said. "The only question is whether you can actually do it."

"I think I could," Amy said. "All I'd have to do is to modify a skin fungus so that it could cause photosynthesis in people's skins. It'd take a lot of modifications to make it into a symbiote, and I'd have to watch that it didn't cause other kinds of problems, but it might be something that could be done."

"If I get you a lab, could you do the work under the supervision of some people who will help make sure that there aren't any side effects?"

Amy stared at me for a moment. "The Protectorate is giving you a lot of access to resources."

More like Cauldron was, but I was hardly going to tell her that. With any luck, the Protectorate wouldn't know about it until we had a final product ready to launch, and Cauldron had an army of lawyers ready to make sure that they weren't able to stop it.

I shrugged. "They've got to protect their cash cow."

"There may be some unavoidable side effects," she said. "I might turn people blue or green. I might even add some other tweaks, things that make people healthier."

"If you can make it cure diabetes and heart disease, that would be great," I admitted.

She was silent for a long moment, her mind obviously going to places that I'd hoped it would go. "I might be able to do other things... slow down the aging process, cure some major diseases. If you think you can keep the PRT off my back I could actually do some good in the world instead of just patching people up all the time."

I smiled at her. "Hey, if you do it right, you might just invent yourself out of a job."

She stared at me and didn't say anything for a long moment. For a short period I was afraid that I'd overplayed my hand. It was like telling me that I'd killed every other possible opponent ever... what the hell would I do with my life then?

"Wouldn't that be something," she said in a low, wistful voice.

"I'm sure you could still have a career making unicorns or something," I said. "There's always rich girls wanting unicorns."

"Or dragons," she said.

"Dibs if you actually make one," I said.

Sue me. Dragons are cool.

Besides, they could hardly eat more than me and Dad.

"As long as the skin treatment doesn't reproduce itself and it's reversible I think we'll be all right," I said. "I've talked with some... experts, and it's possible that some battles I may have in the future might cause some damage to the biosphere."

She stared at me. "Have you thought about _not_ destroying the biosphere?"

"I'm not saying I will," I said. "But it could happen. We have to be ready just in case."

"I'm not hearing a no," she said. She hesitated. "You don't _want_ to destroy the biosphere, do you? I mean sometimes our powers make us want to do terrible things, but that doesn't mean we should actually do them."

Like turning our girlfriend into a barbie doll? She and Nikki or whoever the girl she'd been with had broken up. I wasn't sure whether it was because the girl had gotten what she wanted from Amy, or because Amy had creeped her out somehow.

Personally I wouldn't have risked pissing off a girl who could melt your face off by touching you, which is why I wouldn't have dated Amy even if I was into girls. I mean I could disintegrate someone, but Amy could literally put an ass on your face.

"Look, I know that if I'm not careful people will die," I said. "But there are some opponents who just can't be stopped unless you fight at your hardest... and I'm strong enough to blow the atmosphere off the whole planet."

I had been talking to Cauldron experts about the fight was against Scion; I felt bad letting her think I was talking about Endbringers but in the end it didn't matter.

I hadn't told her or anyone else about Cauldron. Contessa had warned me about the importance of secrecy. The more people who knew about them, the greater the chance that Scion would hear about it and take steps to remove them from the existence.

While some of it seemed like a rationalization, she actually believed it. Were it to come to the light of day, Cauldron would be much less effective. It wouldn't be able to do some of the things that it had to do, not if it had a dozen different agencies looking over its shoulders.

The Youth Guard was already questioning why I was fighting Shucai and not following the strict hours they'd demanded for all of the other Wards. I'd had to have a meeting with them and my own lawyers explaining that I would quit the Wards if they kept making those kinds of demands.

I'd still keep my merchandising royalties, which were quite substantial even after the PRT got their cut. I was making enough to buy someone a house every month. Ultimately I didn't really need the Protectorate any more.

That was the image that Contessa had wanted me to project, and I had. I'd managed to get a waiver, as well as the rationalization that if I wanted to do the same thing in my free time that I got paid a minimum wage salary to do, that I was free to do it.

"How's the other project going?" she asked.

I let my aura flare as I returned to being a super Saiyan.

"I've been able to maintain it longer and longer. Except for when I've been doing my thing with the Ash Beast, I've been able to maintain the form for almost a week at a time."

It had occurred to me that endurance might become almost as important as strength, and for once Shucai had been in agreement. We'd been holding the form for longer and longer periods, because it was possible that any battles might take longer than the few minutes I'd originally been able to hold the form.

"I've even managed to sleep an entire night without losing the form," I said. "Although I destroyed my bed and my room. Getting the room repaired had been a real bitch; I'm having a bed designed that might be able to withstand me in my sleep. It's tinkertech, and it involves force fields and a lot of other things I don't really understand."

I had a suspicion that it wasn't really going to work, but it had a money back guarantee, and so it didn't really matter that much. The Protectorate was interested in the problem and they were footing the bill, justifying it for research purposes.

Considering that they were the reason that I hadn't gotten the bounty money for the Slaughterhouse Nine, I was happy to take them for everything they were willing to give me.

"It hadn't seemed to do you any harm," Amy admitted. "I've checked every time I've talked to you, and I haven't seen any downsides to it other than the energy usage, and you've been increasing your endurance."

I nodded, and a moment later I stood up.

"It's back to the grindstone," I said. "That's my life these days... fight, eat, argue with Shucai and then fight some more."

We weren't even bothering to train the others any more. We were leaving that to Garrett and Leet and Dad, all of whom were being paid handsomely by the CUI. There had been some controversy about a member of the Protectorate being paid by an enemy power, but the higher ups had been able to rationalize it somehow.

It helped Dad feel like he was contributing more to the household. His merchandise wasn't moving at one percent of what mine was, even though he was doing about average for a rookie Protectorate hero. Of course, the world did not know that he was my father, or he'd have been more popular.

We didn't tell anyone for fear of making him a target; not that he wasn't strong by normal parahuman standards already. He was already stronger than Glory Girl had been in her heyday, and she'd been considered a heavy hitter less than a year ago.

But he was less durable than she had been, and he still wasn't able to take on entire teams of villains by himself. I suspected it wouldn't be that long before he was able to do that, but I certainly had no intention of shoving him in the Ash Beast for a while.

Stepping out of the modest house I'd bought Amy and into the sunlight, I rose up into the air.

"Door," I said.

I could have teleported there myself, and I often did, but getting a sense of how the Doormaker did it was improving my own teleportation.

It also tended to upset the others less. I'd popped in next to Doctor Mother in a bathroom stall once, and she'd been less than amused.

I found myself back in the white conference room that had come to be my arrival spot and I felt for the others.

The process of moving the Case 53's had begun; they were separating them out into villages all over a deserted planet. There had been discussions about who to put in each village, and it had been decided to place people with those they were least likely to hurt.

The houses in each village were designed to be as nice and livable as possible, with as many amenities as we could find. Recorded cable shows would be played, and a town library was being set up.

We had professionals looking into what sort of work these people could do; I'd seen what being idle and not contributing had done to the Dockworkers. People felt like they needed to contribute to the community, and I was bound and determined that we were going to try.

The money for all of this was being funneled from the accounts of criminals who were no longer living. Apparently the Number Man had been their accountant and he had access to all kinds of funds.

I wasn't letting him get his hands on my money, though.

It wasn't as though I'd actually expected to actually run Cauldron on a day to day basis. While I was fourteen I wasn't naive. The organization was composed of several hundred people who knew what they were doing, and several thousand people who didn't have any idea that they were working for a nefarious organization.

There were shell companies being used to move money and pay workers, and there was actually a dental plan and health insurance. People clocked in and they clocked out. There were details that made my eyes glaze over, which I'm sure Contessa intended from the very beginning.

I didn't expect a paycheck, and I didn't want to run things. I just wanted a chance to curb their worst abuses and have an opportunity to guide them in a direction that might actually be helpful to people. They'd been so focused on a single goal for so long that they couldn't even see what might be on the other side.

It was as though the American Cancer Society actually discovered a cure for all cancers... and they had living weapons of mass destruction that suddenly had nothing to do.

So by having them looking into possible ways that they could actually make things better I was giving them a chance to become better in the future. An unexpected side effect was that the gloomy thoughts I'd been hearing from the rank and file were vanishing.

For a long time most of Cauldron had secretly thought that all of this was hopeless, that they were somehow throwing a bottle into the ocean and hoping that it would find someone who would rescue them.

Although the odds really weren't all that better now, the fact that they were looking past the day that Scion died was a subliminal signal to the employees that the leadership thought that we might actually win.

I was hearing optimism for the first time, and the attitude was contagious. Even Contessa, who should have known better was feeling happier these days. It was all an illusion, of course, but wasn't that always true about hope?

Approaching the conference room I was to meet Doctor Mother and Alexandria I heard some raised voices.

"He's going to be a problem," I heard Doctor Mother say. "I'm seeing signs of suicidal ideations. Being the most powerful parahuman on the planet was important to him; not that he is not he feels adrift."

"He's still the most versatile cape," Alexandria said. "Remind him of that. I'll have Taylor take a look inside his head and see if he is actually suicidal or if he's just being gloomy."

"I'd argue the ethics of that, but this is too important to bother with it. Are we sure that Miss Hebert is... sophisticated enough to make that kind of determination?"

"She's fourteen, but she's not naive," Alexandria said. "I don't think anyone who can read minds is likely to stay naive for very long."

"Should she determine that he is suicidal, how can we force him to go to therapy?"

"I'll ask Contessa. It'll take away from her other paths that she has running, but this is important."

I knocked on the door.

"Taylor!" Alexandria said as I entered. "I'd like to talk to you about Eidolon."


	69. Begin

A portal opened in space in front of me.

"My name is Sparta," I began.

Before I could respond, a tentacle lashed out at me, wrapping around my neck. It had grinding surfaces on the underside of the tentacle, and if I'd been a norm person it would have torn my head off.

The creature pulled frantically at me, and then a moment later it came lumbering out of the darkness. This was one of the worse looking Case 53s; it's body was composed of rippling tentacles that were constantly moving, with no sign of a body on the inside.

"I'm here to tell you that you are free," I said. "Or at least freer than you have been."

Launching itself at me, the Case 53 turned out to have a beak like an octopus, one that bit down hard enough to actually hurt. I carefully schooled my features so that she didn't realize she'd affected me.

"What was done to you was a crime," I said. "But I'm here to make sure that the people who did this to you are going to make it right."

Sarah stopped. She didn't have apparent eyes, but she seemed to be looking at me. Finally she spoke, her voice sounding like something that living phlegm would make.

"You did this to me," she said. Her words were only barely understandable.

I shook my head. "I'm the one who managed to get you some freedom. I killed Leviathan and Behemoth and now I'm making these people at least try to make your life better."

"No you didn't," she said. She stopped trying to bite me though.

"Yes. We've got video," I said. "There's a whole orientation package available in a village about a ten minute walk for here."

"I don't walk," she said bitterly.

"You didn't before," I said. "But now you are going to stand."

She was silent a moment. "Can they fix me?"

"We're working on it," I said. "It's possible that we might be able to make things a little better for you, but never get you back to normal. That's the bad news. The good news is that we aren't going to lock you away in a dark room any more. Any tests or experimentation that is done on you will require your written consent; for those who can no longer write, recorded audio consent."

"Why would I let them experiment on me any more?" she asked.

"It might lead to your getting better," I said. "Or if not you, someone else. Didn't you get into this because you wanted to be a hero?"

"I wanted to not die," she said.

"Well, I can't give you your old life back, but I can make the life you are living now as comfortable as possible. When we get to the village there will be some people who will have questions for you about things you like to do; this will be so that we can see about getting you the things you need for whatever your hobbies or jobs are."

"I'm not sure I can control myself around people," she admitted after a moment.

"Don't worry," I said. "The people who will be asking the question will be people just like you, people who were released to the village before you. We've grouped the villages so that people aren't likely to accidentally hurt each other... no one in the village will be a squishy."

"Squishy?"

"As squishy as a normal person," I said. "I'm stronger than Alexandria, and sometimes I worry that if I shake someone's hand I'll accidentally turn it into paste."

"I'm sure that's just as bad as being a squid monster,' she said acidly.

I shrugged. "A super strong squid monster. There's going to be a lot of work involved in putting your village together, and they will need a lot of hands involved."

"You're making us build our own houses?"

"This is an empty world," I said. "We're going to give you the tools you need to conquer it, to make the world into what you want it to be. If someone wants to sit back and watch television, we'll provide that, but if you want more, you'll have to work for it."

"I was into pottery back home," she said wistfully. "Not anything professional, you know, just amateur stuff."

"Imagine what you could do now," I said. "You don't have fingers, but you've got a lot of tentacles. I'll bet you could do things that would surprise a normal potter."

She slowly pulled away from me.

"You'll hold your own elections once everyone gets to town; elect your own head men or council or whatever. It doesn't matter if you call him a mayor or a sheriff, or a Duke."

"Duke?"

"There's one town full of nerds; they're going full on Renaissance faire," I said. "Another couple of towns are doing an old west theme. Some towns aren't doing any theme at all."

"And what if I don't like the theme everybody comes up with?" she asked.

"You can ask for a transfer," I said. "As long as it is to a place where you won't be automatically dangerous. This is a whole new world."

"A world of freaks," she said.

"We're all freaks," I said. "It's just not so much on the outside for most people."

She followed me down the path I had made, and we talked. The longer we talked the more excited I could see that she got. I'd had Cauldron investigate these people, even more than what was on their initial files, with an emphasis on personalities and interests.

I hadn't been good with the first few Case 53s, but the more I did it, the better I was getting. Many of them attacked first, which had resulted in me being poisoned, burned, frozen, sand blasted and cut. Seeing that effects strong enough to injure me even a little were rare, I hadn't minded.

I'd even been using the Bacta tank instead of Panacea. They were minor injuries and I hadn't wanted to answer questions she might have about where I'd gotten them.

Every person I talked to made me a little stronger, and not just physically. The more I talked to people, the easier it was getting to talk to people. I found that I sympathized with some of these people, and even liked some of them.

Even their non-human forms were getting less disturbing. Once you'd seen one bubbling snot monster, like the third Case 53 I'd seen, someone covered in hair or scales just didn't rate.

Furthermore, the more I tried to convince these people of the virtues of working together, the better it started to sound to me. In convincing them, I was convincing myself.

Had this been Contessa's plot all along? Her way of doing what Piggot had failed to do by sending me to school?

I couldn't know, but I'd helped some of the villages in clearing trees, and in starting to rebuild their shattered lives, and it was a welcome change from doing nothing but training.

Seeing gratitude on faces, and sometimes on people who didn't have faces, was somehow much more rewarding than the hero worship I got from normal people when I went out as Sparta. Those people who worshiped me because I was strong, or because I'd killed left me cold.

These people? They actually needed help, and every little thing we did made their lives better. It was a little like the feeling some people got from working at a soup kitchen, except that instead of providing a little warmth and a single meal, I was helping them build an entire new life.

There were challenges. Ordinary architecture wouldn't work for people who had non-standard and sometimes non-humanoid forms. As a squid monster, Sarah probably wouldn't want or need an ordinary chair or bed.

However, there were craftsmen among the Case 53s who had made furniture before. We had them wracking their brains to come up with new furniture designs for different body types.

Having them build their own towns might seem like adding insult to injury, but ultimately people tended not to respect things they were given. Things that they earned on the other hand tended to be another matter altogether.

"What are you doing?" Shucai asked suspiciously. "You are cheating somehow."

"I'm just training harder than you are," I said. I grinned at him. "It's not like I didn't blow past you in a few weeks anyway; why should now be any better."

"Because there are no more opponents to fight!" he said. "We have to wait on the next Endbringer, and there is no telling what its power might be."

"I'll let you go first if it's a new one," I said generously.

"So that I can be caught in a Grey Boy effect, or poisoned, or whatever crazy power it has?" he asked. He spat. "So that you can take over the world when I'm gone?"

"You think I couldn't kill you now if I wanted to?" I asked. "I could just claim it was a training accident, and what would your country be able to do about it?"

He stared at me resentfully.

"I will go beyond you," he said. "Reach a state beyond Super Saiyan."

"So... Super Super Saiyan?"

He scowled. "Make fun all you want! I will achieve it, and then all your boasting will be for nothing. I will be the only one and true Saiyan!"

I sneered.

He'd been giving me nothing but hell for weeks, and there was something about him that made me want to rub his face in the fact that I would always better.

"You're a soft rice eater," I said in Cantonese. I'd been practicing some Chinese swear terms that I'd learned from some of the younger Saiyans once they'd loosened up.

It was a term in China that meant a man who was mooching financially off a woman; someone who was less than a man.

His face flushed, and then he looked down at me in an insulting manner.

"Fēijīchǎng," he said, sneering.

"Calling me flat chested... isn't that a little weak?" I asked. "But you'll always be weak, won't you? You'll always be second best. A lifetime of work, and a little girl got there in a few months. How much longer before the others overtake you? They're all getting stronger faster than you are."

"You just aren't a strong enough opponent!"

"If that's true, then why do I keep getting stronger?" I asked. "Because you aren't catching up, not really."

Goading him like this was stupid; eventually he really would try to kill me. Still, I had my reasons. I was twenty times as strong as Alexandria in my base form; a thousand times as strong when I transformed, and it still wasn't enough.

I had to keep him enraged, or it was possible that he would get frustrated, and he'd lose interest in getting stronger. It was a balancing act; get too far ahead and he might give up. Let him get too close, and he might actually be able to kill me.

Admitting that I enjoyed taunting him was a little uncomfortable, though. It felt a little like the bullying that I had hated so much when I was at Winslow. Shucai was hardly weak, but I was the one in a position of power.

Yet it led to glorious fights, and every time we fought after one of these sessions I could feel my strength creeping upward, if only marginally. Even a percentage point might be the difference between living and dying, between everyone in the world surviving or the entire world and all the others being destroyed.

For a moment I thought he would attack me again; we'd been fighting for the last four hours, and we were both exhausted.

He stared at me for a moment, and then he was flying away.

"Well, screw him."

As I stepped out of the Bacta chamber, Leet was waiting for me.

"I finally finished the enhancer," he said. "It wasn't really one of the designs that was in my head, and so I had to combine more than one of them. I think it will work, though."

I took it and looked at it.

"I'll have to test this someplace safe. Can I take it?"

"I've got the plans written down," he said. "In multiple places. I've got a second one half built just in case; I know how hard you are on things."

After I stepped into the other room and dried off and slipped into my things, I came out again.

"This is going to help a lot," I said. "Really. It may make the difference between winning and losing."

"Against the Endbringers?" he asked.

"Right," I said.

He looked confused, but before he could ask any questions, I put my finger to my head, and the world simmered around me.

I found myself in the largest Case 53 village; the one that was farthest along. This one was filed with the people who were closest to human; the ones who had almost made the cut to be released out into the world but not quite.

They were the least likely to be dangerous to each other, and they had found working together a little easier than the others, since their body types tended to be recognizably humanoid.

I'd even noticed a burgeoning romance between a woman who looked like a 1930's era werewolf, and a snake man. I tried not to think about that one a lot.

Slipping the crown on, I focused my thoughts.

" _I am Sparta_ ," I said.

The sounds of hammering in the half built log cabins around me stopped. People were coming out and looking around, confused.

" _I am practicing a new way of communicating; a way that may help me to save the lives of people the next time that the Endbringers or Scion attacks."_

We'd told them all about Scion; it was my idea as a way to explain why they'd had to suffer the transformations they'd had to suffer. Not all of them had taken it well initially, but they'd all settled down eventually.

Most of them were coming to accept that I was the reason that they were getting the freedoms they were being given. Some of them resented me for not pushing for more; they felt that they should be allowed to go home. They had families and lives, and while they had been irrevocably mutilated, they wanted to return to the lives they'd once known.

I'd caved at Contessa's insistence that letting them go back with memories intact would hasten the end of the world. She had brought me to four different precogs who had all insisted the same thing. I'd looked into their minds and they believed it.

The more people who talked about what Scion was, or even about what Cauldron was, the greater the chance that Scion would overhear. Furthermore, revealing Cauldron would immediately begin to strip them of their power, as nations would begin to freeze all of the assets that they could find and to purge their employees of the people Cauldron needed to function.

No nation could defeat Cauldron individually, because Cauldron was multidimensional. However, they could cripple Cauldrons eyes and ears in Earth Bet and make actually doing any good with the power they had impossible.

There was a crowd growing around me. A hundred, no two hundred villagers, no face entirely human stared up at me.

" _I will eventually be asked to fight all of the other Endbringers, and then to fight Scion,"_ I said in their heads. " _And once that is done, you will be allowed to go home. But there may come a point where I need more energy."_

I stared out at them.

" _I don't have the power to forcibly take energy from anyone,"_ I said. _"And no one person has enough power to make a difference on their own."_

There was a question in their eyes, but before anyone could speak I continued.

" _But if I take a little from everyone; not from one or two or even a thousand, but from many thousands, or millions or billions of people, then I may just have the power I need to defeat this monster once and for all. It would be like you are fighting alongside me, your strength adding to my own."_

" _You'd get to finally strike back,"_ I said. " _To show Scion that humanity will not be forgotten! We will not lay down and die; we will fight! Together we are stronger than any one of us alone."_

No one had said anything, and the growing crowd was as silent as a grave.

I wasn't just reaching them; I was reaching the other villages thousands of miles away too; I could sense their thoughts even from here.

" _But it will only work if we practice, and that is what I am asking of you today."_

For a moment I thought they were going to deny me, but then I felt willingness, first from one person, and then another, and then another. These people had every reason not to like me, but they were willing to lend whatever help they could in stopping something that would kill everyone they had ever loved.

It gave me hope.

" _Let's begin,_ " I said into the minds of hundreds.


	70. Blank

The energies of a few hundred people weren't much in the scheme of things, even if they were parahumans. At first I was wholly unsuccessful, and I had no idea why.

It took several attempts for me to figure out a way to make it happen, and the downside was crippling.

Apparently I couldn't do it in my transformed state, which put it on my list of useless techniques. Absorbing that kind of energy would be great, but any enemy who was strong enough to make me need to do it would be strong enough to kill me while I was busy trying to do it.

It was painfully slow, too. It made the KaMeHaMeHa wave seem lighting fast by comparison, and while my father hadn't been entirely wrong about that attack being useless, it was definitely a little slow.

In a better world I'd have found a faster way to do it, but there seemed to be some kind of block against pulling power from people too quickly. Maybe it was because doing that would actually hurt them, and they unconsciously resisted anything that was going to damage them.

As though Scion wasn't going to damage them more than anything I was going to do.

I hadn't found a way to pull Ki from people involuntarily, and slow was the only thing I could get from them even on a voluntary basis. If I'd been able to do it at will, I might have been able to use that to drain Scion of his power, which would have given me an ever regenerating source of power. He'd have grown weaker even as I'd have grown stronger, and I would only have had to stay alive long enough for him to exhaust himself.

Whether the world would have survived was an entirely different question. I

More power wasn't enough; although I had a sense that Scions Ki was vast, I could also sense that a lot of it was hidden in another dimension, and that it was possible that I was not sensing it all. It felt like he'd split himself among several different dimensions, likely to safeguard him from a single catastrophic event, like the sun going nova or a huge meteor strike.

I'd wasted a week on the Ki absorption scheme, and I couldn't afford to waste any more time on it.

I'd promised to talk to Eidolon, and he'd been ducking appointments with me. I was capable of simply teleporting to him wherever he was, but I hadn't wanted to risk appearing next to him when he was in his secret identity, or even worse, when he was in bed with a woman.

It had occurred to me to simply check to see that there was no Ki anywhere near him, but he'd been staying in populated places for the last week. He was in one now, and it didn't look like that was going to change.

My other choice was simply to fly somewhere nearby, change into my civilian dress and then confront him that way. As much as I hadn't wanted to be bothered by this, I wouldn't have wanted to find out that he'd actually killed himself because I hadn't done anything either.

To that end I found myself in an alley in New York city. Doormaker had been kind enough to open a passageway for me after I had changed instead of forcing me to arrive and try to undress and redress behind a dumpster. That would have been a little humiliating, and from the look of the alleyway, there were very few surfaces that hadn't been covered in some kind of effluvia.

It looked like a homeless man had been living here until recently, and that he'd gotten sick all over the wall. There was no sign of him now, so either he had gotten some help, been arrested, or he'd died.

New York was cleaner than Brockton Bay, even before all of the upheavals that had destroyed a lot of the infrastructure and caused so many problems. It wasn't neat and tidy by any means; no city this size was, unless there were draconian laws to enforce it, and those usually involved some kind of flogging.

Still, there was an energy here that I'd never seen in Brockton Bay, a sort of hope that wasn't on the faces of the people in my home town. Maybe it was having a member of the Triumvirate here permanently that was the problem.

Eidolon was based in Dallas, so I was having trouble understanding why he'd been in this city for so long. He'd supposedly taken a sabbatical, which had been part of what had triggered the worry in the others that he might be suicidal; he wasn't the kind of man who took vacations. He loved what he did, and he'd loved being the strongest person in the world.

Now that he wasn't, and that his powers were fading... I'd heard that from Alexandria and I'd been shocked... he'd lost interest in everything. He'd been used to being at the front of the fight, and he hadn't even gotten to lift a finger during the last two Endbringer fights.

He felt like a has been, or at least that's what those members of Cauldron who couldn't read minds were guessing, and they wanted to make sure that he wasn't going to do anything.

Stepping around the corner, I grimaced. He was in a bar, and a sleazy looking one at that.

Even though I was tall and well muscled for an almost fifteen year old, it wasn't likely that I would be allowed inside. I'd never bothered to get a fake ID and I was still young looking enough that no bouncer was likely to accept one anyway.

There was one way to get what I wanted.

I pulled up my hoodie, and I headed straight for the bouncer. He was large and bald, and he had a number of tattoos, but none of them were the white supremacist tattoos that I was used to from Brockton Bay. They seemed more tribal than anything, even though the man was a white guy in his forties.

"Get lost, kid," he said as soon as he saw my face. "Come back in five or six years."

His tone wasn't unkind, but it was firm. I touched his mind for a second, and that glimpse showed that he actually seemed like a decent person. He was actually worried about me and the reason I was trying to get in.

"My Dad's in there," I said. "And I'm not leaving until he comes out."

"You'll have to wait out here, then," he said.

I wouldn't be able to bribe him, and while pushing past him would be negligibly easy for me, it might actually lose him his job. Plus, I preferred not to actually do any crimes.

The music from inside was loud and throbbing. I grimaced. "What would you say if I yelled that you were touching me?"

I had no intention of doing so, of course, but he almost seemed to expect that kind of threat, and so who was I to disabuse him of that notion.

"There's security cameras up on the wall for a reason," he said.

"Fine," I said.

"You wouldn't want to come in here anyway," he said. "Seriously."

I walked across the street and into the alley and a moment later I was in the air. I was behind the bar a moment later, too fast for anyone but a parahuman to see.

"Door?" I called out softly.

A moment later a doorway opened on one side of the door in front of me, even as a second doorway opened on the other side of the door. It traveled only a distance of maybe an inch, but if anyone saw me coming through the door, they'd see what they expected to see. They'd assume that the door had been left unlocked or that I'd broken in.

There were cameras back here, but they were visibly broken. If this place was anything like Brockton Bay, it had probably been done by staff members wanting to smoke while on the clock. Except in Brockton Bay, what they wanted to smoke often wasn't tobacco.

As I stepped through the door, I realized that the place had a strange, musky scent. The music was almost painfully loud, and the rooms beyond were dimly lit, almost as though the business was afraid of what would be seen when the lights finally came up.

There was a fuse box and other miscellaneous boxes of supplies. These mostly seemed to be filled with theatrical costumes. I could see what looked like dressing rooms to my right. Was this place some kind of theater?

I turned a corner and I grimaced as I saw several stages up in different corners of the room. There were a lot of brass fixtures and a lot of high backed, comfortable looking chairs.

There were also a lot of bored looking men and even less enthusiastic women, none of whom were wearing any clothes.

I grimaced.

No wonder he hadn't wanted to be in his home town; there was too much of a risk that he'd be recognized in his secret identity. Eidolon struck me as too egotistical to have a secret identity that was a nonentity. He'd have been a recognizable figure in his community, and he wouldn't have wanted to be seen going into a place like this.

There was no way I was going in there.

I frowned and concentrated.

" _Eidolon_ ," I said mentally. " _Come outside, or I'm going to come in and get you_."

I could see him from where I was sitting. He wasn't with any of the girls; he was just sitting and staring at the reddish colored glass in front of him. He wasn't a good looking man; he was older than Dad, middle aged maybe, with thick eyebrows and thinning hair. He had a big nose and ears, and he had heavy jowls.

He started as he heard my mental voice.

" _I'll give you to the count of three to come out_ ," I said.

I felt his rebellious thoughts; I couldn't make him, and he had the power to Master me into leaving him alone.

" _All right,_ " I said. " _You asked for it_."

He tensed, obviously expecting something like my breaking through a wall like the Kool-Aid man. Instead I simply headed back to the fuse box, opened it with a jerk, and then I turned off all the power at once.

There were screams from inside the club, but it didn't matter; I put my finger to my forehead and concentrated. A moment later I was next to Eidolon, and I had him in my grasp.

Before he could so much as react, I was flying us both up into the air and toward the back of the room. While I could feel the Ki of everyone in the room, hitting one of the chairs at the speeds I was moving would have caused an explosion that probably would have killed someone.

We were out the back door before he even thought to fight, and I mentally sent out a command to the doormaker.

A moment later we were through a doorway and into another world.

It was nighttime here, and we were on an island somewhere. The moon was shining .

"You can't just kidnap me like that!" Eidolon spat, pushing himself away from me. "I'm a member of the Triumvirate! I'm the most powerful man in the world."

"Not anymore," I said.

It wasn't even technically true. I wasn't a man, but Shucai was, and he was already stronger than Eidolon.

"You think I'm afraid of you?" he asked. "You're just a child! A spoiled child who was given a power you haven't earned!"

"Oh?" I asked mildly. "And you did?"

"I sweat blood and tears every time there was an Endbringer attack!" he said. "Where were you in Japan? In all of those other places? You were in diapers."

He was letting powers grow within him, powers he was fairly certain could kill me. The nature of his power was that it took time to build up, which meant that he was best as a team player, with people around him to distract the opposition until it was too late.

That was the only reason he was talking to me. He was stalling for time until his powers were ready.

Part of me wanted to see if I could survive whatever he was going to throw at me; if I could it would be a little harder to attack me that way in the future. Maybe I could get him to be my new Ash Beast, assuming I could ever reach a point where I could trust him not to actually kill me.

But first I had to get him out of this funk. He really was suicidal; that was why he was planning this attack. Either he would be proven to be the best, or he would die. He really believed I would kill him. He thought of me as a thug; he tended to have a low opinion of brutes who weren't Alexandria."

Before he could say anything, I plunged into his mind. Mostly my power could be used for communication and the reading of surface thoughts. Most people tended to say what they were thinking in their heads and that was easy enough to read. Going deeper was harder, and I had to focus harder.

At first I saw an image of a wheelchair. It took me a moment to understand; before he'd had his powers, he'd been crippled? I focused harder. He'd had seizures, and his entire life he'd felt weak and helpless. He'd hated it. When he'd gotten better, he'd tried joining the army; he'd tried to be strong but he'd been rejected.

He'd been tempted to suicide then too. He'd actually tried then.

"I know what it's like to feel weak," I said.

He froze, staring at me.

"Do you think I was always like this? A few months ago I was the one who was pushed around, looked down on. It wasn't just being physically weak; I couldn't do anything. I think you just kind of... shut down after a while."

That resonated. I needed to keep talking.

"Getting strong... changed me. I think I focused on getting strong because it meant that I didn't have to focus on the fact that I hated the person I had been. I desperately wanted... needed to be someone... anyone else."

Was I talking about him or myself? There were an uncomfortable number of parallels.

"But that's the thing about power. There's never enough. You always want more, and when there aren't enough challenges, you make your own."

He froze, and the color drained from his face.

One of the powers his shard had chosen was a power that analyzed other powers. He would use it to look for weaknesses in my powers that he could exploit to kill me.

He was looking down at his hands, and his power was analyzing his own power just as it would have analyzed mine. The only reason I could see for that was to provide a benchmark; a way of comparing things like strength or energy attacks, or even of defenses. His power wasn't entirely spooled up yet, and so I couldn't tell how detailed the analysis would be.

He should have only had three slots for his powers, but instead he had four. Three of them were the ones he'd recognized; the power analysis, an ability to cloud the mind and make someone catatonic so that they were unaware of the passage of time, and the ability to create a sword that would cut through almost anything.

I felt a chill. Depending on how good that sword was, it would be a difficult combination for me to survive. Even if the pain of the attack shook me out of the catatonia, he'd have been able to keep freezing me and attacking until I was either dead, or reacted fast enough to kill him.

Esoteric effects were going to be the hardest for me to deal with, and while Cauldron theorized that Scion had given away most of his powers, no one had any idea what powers he had kept. I'd need to train with Eidolon to see if I could survive or even adapt to some of these kinds of powers.

I froze as I realized why Eidolon had such a look of horror on his face. He should have had only three available power slows, but there were four; one was already filled, and Eidolon thought the fourth power had always been filled, from the time he had started as a hero.

Endbringer control.

It took me a moment to understand what I was seeing... what he was seeing. The implications escaped me, but the expression on his face and the thoughts racing through his mind clued me in on the implications.

For more than a decade he'd been proud of being the world's greatest hero. It had been the foundation of his self image and his identity. Instead, he'd been responsible for the deaths of millions.

The Endbringers would have slept for an eternity, or at least until Scion woke them. Eidolon was responsible for that. He'd needed what I would have needed; a suitable challenge. His power had done what it had always done; provided what he needed.

I felt the moment that something broke within him. His other powers fell away, and his mind simply went blank.

That could have gone better.


	71. Gone

"I still don't know why you want us to keep attacking you," Rebecca said. "My poison almost killed you the first time we tried it."

"And the last time we tried it, it barely slowed me down," I said. "That's why we keep doing it."

My idea to use Eidolon to model strange effects hadn't panned out, because he was still catatonic, but using the Case 53s to make me stronger was a good secondary option. It distressed some often, especially the older ones, but when I explained the reasoning, they made peace with it.

I'd even let myself be mastered a couple of times by specialists hired by Cauldron, trying to learn to overcome those kinds of effects. My success with that was mixed. Some kinds of effects were easier to shake off than others, but I did get tougher against all of them.

Contessa and the others had been reluctant to use Masters on me, presumably because they wanted to reserve them for after Scion was dead to either take me down or control me. I'd insisted, and I'd gotten what I wanted though.

Rebecca reminded me of the monster from that space movie from the late seventies my Dad had shown me, the one where the alien had attached itself to a man's face. She was jet black, and she had more fangs than anyone should ever have to think about. She even had the secondary set of jaws that projected from her mouth, jaws that were insanely poisonous.

I'd barely made it to Panacea in time because I'd overestimated my own resistance. It had taken several more sessions before I was able to shrug it off, and today's session was likely to be our last.

There was no way to guess what effects Scion would use; he most likely had kept some powers hidden that he didn't use just in case. I needed to be ready for those.

These sessions with the Case 53s were being scheduled by Contessa, with a Path to ensure that I was challenged and would grow, but that I would not die.

"Still...I don't like hurting anyone."

For someone who looked like a horror movie monster, Rebecca had the sweetest personality. I actually liked her, just like I liked a lot of the Case 53s once I got used to their appearances.

I'd been exposed to so many of them by now that appearance was mattering a lot less to me these days. I was a lot less judgmental than I had been even a few weeks ago.

"Well, this will be the last time. Did you get the movies I sent you?"

Rebecca loved romantic comedies, which was a little sad given her condition. I'd seen several Case 53s pairing up, but she was poisonous, and her bite reflex wasn't entirely under her control.

"Oh, they're great!" she said. "I've seen some of them in my world, but the casting decisions here change the whole thing."

"Really?"

"Yeah. In my world it was Molly Ringwald in Pretty Woman, and Albert Brooks and Susan Day in When Harry Met Sally. They didn't end up together in our version either."

"Weird," I said.

Rebecca was one of the Case 53s who had been pulled from other worlds. About half were those, while the other half were people who had been offered Cauldron vials on Earth Bet and had them fail catastrophically.

"Well, I'll have to watch some of those sometimes," I said. "I can't now... they've got me training pretty much all of the time since school will be starting soon and they're hoping to get as much as they can out of me before then."

I was fibbing a little. No one was making me train other than Shucai.

It was my own idea. Losing Eidolon meant that I was going to have to be even stronger to make up for it. I blamed myself; maybe if I hadn't threatened him, pushed him into thinking of fighting me I might have been able to convince him to get some help.

The reaction of Contessa and the others wasn't what I had expected, though. They assured me that the loss of Eidolon, while terrible, was more than offset if the Endbringers simply stayed in a holding pattern. It was the pressure the Endbringers were bringing to bear that was hastening the end of civilization after all, and they were the more immediate threat.

Despite that, I came three times a week to meet with Eidolon and try to break through the barrier in his mind that was leaving him catatonic.

Ironically, he was in one of the cells vacated by the Case 53s. His secret identity was being maintained by claiming that he was recovering from an accident, which was true enough.

They wanted me to keep trying, not only because he was their friend... and after all those years working together he was... but because of what his power would mean. Being able to control even one Endbringer would have been a triumph. Three of them working together would undoubtedly be able to kill either me or Shucai.

An army of Endbringers would be a fantasy come true. It might not kill Scion, but it could tip the balance far enough in our favor that even the higher ups might have some hope.

Yet no matter how I tried I couldn't get through the wall.

I could understand his horror. I'd killed thousands of people by being careless, and I still had trouble thinking about it. I mostly dealt with it by pretending it hadn't happened at all, or by consoling myself that I would do better and save more people in the future.

But saving one person didn't really make up for killing another. No amount of rescues would make up for it, not really. It was a shame that I would carry with me for the rest of my life.

Even so, I'd done it while trying to save other people. I'd killed Behemoth in the end, and so that gave their deaths some kind of meaning.

Eidolon had been responsible for the deaths of millions, and there hadn't even been any reward for it in the end. Hundreds, maybe thousands of heroes had been killed fighting these monsters, and he'd known many of them.

There was something about the human psyche that made the death of a single person you knew worse than that of a million people you didn't. He'd been to every single Endbringer battle, and he had faces to attach to the names on the Endbringer monuments.

Knowing that I'd killed all of my friends... that I couldn't imagine.

Sometimes I managed to get glimpses from his mind, but they were brief, ephemeral things. They faded away before I could get a grasp on them.

The one advantage of all of this was that it was forcing me to practice my telepathy in more challenging ways than simply reading surface thoughts. Mind reading was getting easier by the day, and my other abilities were getting better too.

When the two month mark passed and no Endbringers showed, the rest of the world was pleased.

But now the Simurgh was a week overdue, and there were starting to be media reports. There were even some people talking about how she was afraid of me, and that was why she wasn't attacking.

No one knew that it might just be that she'd never particularly wanted to attack in the first place. Some of the Cauldron thinkers wondered if the Endbringers were really sentient at all, or if they were more like sophisticated computer programs; as long as they weren't activated they would lie dormant.

Everyone was on edge, though, because ordinary people wondered if the Simurgh was simply waiting to do something even worse.

Shucai seemed to be the most bothered by it. He had been determined to fight the Simurgh, both because I kept taunting him about his failure to kill even a single Endbringer, and as a way of increasing his own power to be closer to my own.

He'd been taking our fights to new levels, and when she didn't show up as expected, he'd gotten even more angry and pushed even harder. We were both getting stronger, even though the rate of progression was slowing.

It was becoming apparent that just fighting each other wasn't going to be enough. We needed stronger opponents if we were going to continue to get stronger. We were starting to hit a plateau, and this was frustrating him.

I would have thought that having spent years like that, it wouldn't have bothered him as much, but I suppose that having me be stronger was something he couldn't abide.

"-really appreciate everything you've done for us," Rebecca said.

I'd missed the first part of what she said. My thoughts had a tendency to go off on tangents these days; it was probably because I didn't have enough challenges to actually focus on.

"I wish I could do more," I said. I hesitated. "There's someone that I'd like to bring to meet you. She's a girl our age who can control bodies. She mostly uses it to heal, but she can change people too. I just got permission to bring her here."

I could teleport myself, but I hadn't yet been able to bring anyone else with me. I couldn't bring Panacea here without help from Doormaker, although in an emergency Leet could probably come up with something.

"Change people?"

"I can't make any guarantees. It's possible that your power might fight off what she's doing, and she might not be able to do anything. It might be that she can change you partway, but never get you all the way back. I didn't want to get anybody's hopes up because of that."

"Why are you telling me?" she asked.

"Because you're going to be the first person that she treats," I said. "We're going to have to put a muzzle on you, because of the mouth thing, but maybe she can get you come control over it, even if she can't do anything else."

"That would be wonderful," she said. "I'd actually be able to spend time with the others."

"I'm going to be there when she's here, to make sure there are no accidents."

Rebecca was one of the nicest people I knew, but her body tended to lash out uncontrollably under certain sorts of stimulation. That's why she was forced to live out and away from the others. It had led her to feeling even more lonely than she had before. Knowing that you were one of the only ones being denied human contact had to be difficult.

"I'll be good," she said.

"I'd tell you not to tell anyone else, but well..."

She was a good three miles from the village, and the others had learned to give her a wide berth after a couple of accidents with some of the friendlier neighbors. They'd survived, due to having tougher than normal constitutions, but the poison hadn't done anything good for them.

"Well, I've got to get back," I said. "I'll see you next week."

With that, I lifted a finger to my forehead as though I was saluting her, and then I vanished. Dad thought it was corny when I did it, but I suspected that he secretly thought it was cool. Of course, considering that I consciously chose not to read his mind, my ability to guess might be a little off.

I teleported next to Sophia, who started, spilling her drink. She cursed, then stared daggers at me.

Smirking, I stepped around her and into the Wards hall. I had a meeting with Piggot and Armsmaster about how my training was going, and about what I'd found out about Shucai and the CUIs plans.

I'd managed to keep him from finding out that I read minds, despite my urge to throw it in his face. The last thing I needed was for him to learn that it was possible with Ki and replicate it. Giving a high ranking member of the CUI the ability to read minds would be handing their nation the keys to the kingdom.

It was the work of a moment to reach the conference room, and I was seated moments before Piggot and Armsmaster entered the room.

"Sparta," Piggot said coldly.

She didn't like me before she'd learned that I could read minds. Considering that I had the power of two of the Triumvirate combined, and that I had powers that even Eidolon hadn't demonstrated, she worried a lot about what would happen if I ever decided I wanted to take over the world.

I'd seen the hell that Dad had to deal with running the Dockworkers, though, and extrapolating that to the entire world? You'd have to be insane to want to do something like that. Ruling was a thankless job that was more about paperwork and logistics than about people dropping grapes into your mouth.

"So what do you have to tell us?" she asked.

"Well, I've achieved a ten percent increase in strength over the past month. Shucai has gotten fifteen percent stronger. We're going to need bigger challenges if we're going to improve."

"And how is your Asian counterpart taking that?"

"Not well," I admitted. "He's actually upset there hasn't been an Endbringer showing. I'm a little worried that he might do something stupid, like try to dig one up."

It's what I might try to do if I was in his situation, after all, assuming I didn't care about the potential death toll to the people around us.

"Will you be able to contain him if he does go off the rails?"

"Without killing or seriously injuring him?" I shook my head. "He's still a better fighter than I am, with years of experience. The strength difference between us is substantial enough that I could beat him, but he's crazy enough that he wouldn't give in unless I broke him."

"And what are the odds that we can stop him?" she asked. "What are our best options?"

"Use a Master," I said. "Take him by surprise. Poison his food; but whatever you do make sure than it sticks, because if you fail, he will come after you, and he will destroy you. He's strong enough that I doubt Alexandria herself could stop him, and I know Legend couldn't."

"And Eidolon has dropped off the map," Piggot said. "Taking 'personal time."

"My assessment is that he's becoming a threat," I said. "And fighting him isn't giving me what it used to."

Piggot scowled. "I don't know that we can get rid of him though. Certain promises were made, and the political implications of..."

My cell phone buzzed, and a moment later so did Piggot's and Armsmasters. I could hear the sounds of similar alerts being broadcast all over the building. It was the Endbringer alarm.

I staggered as I felt a massive surge of power from the other part of the world. I groaned.

Dragon's face appeared on the screen.

"Sparta!" she said. "There is an Emergency!"

I grimaced. "It's Shucai, isn't it? He's fighting Scion."

"What?" Piggot screeched.

"At 3:42 Eastern Standard time, or 4:42 local time, Scion attacked Shucai n the skies over Shanghai. Three minutes later, Shanghai ceased to exist. The two of them are now fighting, and neither of them seem to care about human casualties."

I scowled. "Crap."

I'd assumed that he'd take the smart way out and start digging up Endbringers. I hadn't realized that he was going to be an idiot and start fighting that far out of his weight class.

"Wait...Scion attacked Shucai?" I asked, blinking.

What had finally set him off? Was it all the training Shucai and I had been doing? Scion had been in the same hemisphere for the first time during our training session this morning. Maybe his sensory abilities weren't as finally honed as mine and Shucai's.

He'd probably gone after Shucai because I was off world and he'd lost track of me.

"The attack seemed to be unprovoked, according to the news choppers that were recording the historic meeting of what Chinese media liked to call the world's two greatest heroes."

I grimaced. "Kill two Endbringers and you don't even rate the top two?"

There was a feeling in the pit of my stomach. I didn't know whether it was dread or excitement. Ever since Alexandria had told me that Scion was going to destroy the moment I had been preparing for this moment. All the training and all the sweat and tears, and part of me was shouting that this was what I was made for.

A smarter part of me was screaming that it was too soon. Neither me or Shucai were strong enough to deal with this, not now, and maybe not ever.

Still, it wasn't like I had a choice. Scion was going to destroy everything I cared about, and my choices were to fight or die. Given those two options, I was always going to choose to fight.

Standing up I sighed. "I need you to get my Dad to safety. If this all goes sideways, he and the Chinese will be the last hope the world has, assuming Scion gives us a chance to rebuild."

I gave Piggot a little salute. "I hope we meet again. If not... well, I want you to know that I did everything I could."

"What's going on?" Piggot asked.

"Scion's a space alien who has decided to destroy this and all other alternate Earths with humans on it. He's the source of all powers and he's why people with powers like to fight so much; they pick people who already want to fight, and then they make it worse."

"What?!"

"I'll explain it later... or it won't matter," I said. "I'm going to try not to die, and I hope you do too."

With that, I was gone.


	72. Wasteland

Everything was a wasteland.

For as far as I could see in every direction, there was a massive crater at least five hundred feet deep. On the horizon I could see steam rising as water was rushing into the pit from the bay only to instantly be turned into super heated vapor as it hit red hot stone.

There wasn't a single sign of life; I couldn't detect any Ki at all, except for Shucai and Scion, and it was shocking. I hadn't realized how much I'd grown accustomed to the feeling of the Ki in the background; even bacteria had microscopic amounts of ki that I normally wasn't even aware of.

Whatever they had done had wiped all of that away. There were no humans, no birds, and not even a sign of bacteria for a fifty mile radius. The entire city of Shanghai was simply gone.

Shucai was fighting for his life. While he was slower and weaker than me, he was faster that Scion, but it didn't matter. As much damage as he was doing to Scion's form, it was replaced almost instantaneously by new flesh from Scion's real body in another dimension.

Ultimately, it wasn't a fight that he could win. Scion had an unlimited amount of endurance, and while Shucai could fight for hours, the world would not be able to survive a full on onslaught for that amount of time.

Sooner or later someone was going to get desperate, and an attack that was meant for the opponent would hit the Earth more directly.

The dust from what the two of them had already done was already flying out to sea. It blackened the sky, and I knew that it was composed of particles of metal, and bits and pieces of people. If they continued this, the world might face a nuclear winter even if it was destroyed.

The only way this was going to end up well was to fight in a way that would end the fight early. Yet following Shucai's lead would only make things worse. I had to fight smart and not simply jump into the fire face first.

At the speed I was thinking, Shucai's fight with Scion seemed slow. It was as though I had ten minutes to think for every second that passed in the real world, and ten seconds to think for every second that Shucai and Scion fought.

I had to use that time wisely, or the world itself was in trouble.

I closed my eyes and I tried to sense Scion. His real body wasn't just in one other dimension; it was scattered among several. If we could move the fight to one of those, not only would we have a chance of doing real damage, but I would no longer have to hold back for fear of destroying my home world.

His Ki was diffuse and scattered, and I was getting a bearing when I felt a sudden blinding pain in my face and I found myself flying backwards and crashing into the ground leaving an even larger crater in my wake.

I blinked as I saw Scion and Shucai standing over me. They were no longer fighting.

"What?" I stammered. "Why did you hit me?"

"He made me an offer," Shucai said. He smirked. "I accepted. Why should I stay on a worthless planet like this one when I can seek out my true destiny among the stars?"

"You can't," I said. "These are your people!"

"These were never my people, and they aren't yours either. This glorious creature has promised to help me find our true race out in space, with opponents that can give us a true challenge. What has this world ever done for you?"

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"You should be ruling them, and instead they have you working for minimum wage?" he said. "These people will never understand what it is to be one of us; they will always fear and hate us. Join me, and we will find our true destiny."

I grimaced as I stood.

"That's not going to happen," I said. "This is my planet, and I'm going to defend it with my dying breath."

"I'm O.K. With that," Shucai said, smirking. With that he pulled his hands back and he began drawing in energy.

I rose up in the air quickly; the last thing I needed was fr him to aim an energy blast directly at the Earth. The only advantages I had over Shucai was speed, strength, and power, and the various tricks I had created.

He had Scion on his side, and against Scion alone the fight would have been dreadfully one sided. Against them both, the situation was a lot more dire.

He began to blast energy at me, and I began to duck and weave. It was often easier to tire him out than to actually defeat him.

I felt something flying directly at me, and I felt Scion grabbing for me. He was trying to hold onto me. He probably intended to hold me still so that Shucai could cut me in half with his Ki disk. That wasn't going to happen.

Grabbing his arm, I swung him around so that he flew into Shucai. They both flew over the horizon.

I hadn't really focused on fighting multiple opponents since my early training with Garrett. Most of my training had assumed that I would be fighting Scion alone. This fight could get ugly fast if I wasn't careful.

Shucai was suddenly moving toward me faster than I'd ever seen him. I dodged, only to be hit again by a blast of energy from Scion. It was a massively powerful blast, and I screamed as I found myself driven back.

They'd been faking how slow the fight was to get me off my guard.

Scion grabbed me with an iron grip. I shoved my palm into his armpit and blasted, my Ki erupting into a cutting edge. His arm came away, and with it his grip, but it was already growing back as Shucai hit me from behind.

I punched him in the face, and I was no longer holding back as I had in every fight we'd had before. He was punching me in the face, and I was returning the favor, and a moment later Scion was joining in.

"He needs someone to do his thinking for him," Shucai said. "And I can't think of anyone who would fit the bill better than me."

"So you want to be his wife?" I asked, smashing him in the nose. "I thought you didn't want to be anyone's bitch. That's why you've done everything you've done."

I'd peeked inside his mind a time or two, and while there was no time to do so now, I hadn't forgotten what I had found. He'd grown up feeling weak and he'd been abused. His own father had been a Saiyan, and he hadn't been a nice one.

Shucai had decide that he would never let anyone abuse him again, and he'd actively worked to eliminate anyone in the world who would threaten him.

"You'll never be able to trust him," I said. "He won't need you after this."

"He needs me to complete his cycle," Shucai said. He elbowed me in the stomach and threw me over his shoulder into the arms of a waiting Scion.

I sagged in Scion's arms and struggled, but he was stronger than I was. I lifted my feet and blasted Shucai in the face, sending Scion and me flying backward like a rocket.

"He'll leave you behind to die with the rest of us. They destroy civilizations; they don't bring pets with them."

I grunted as Scion put one arm around my throat from behind and began to squeeze. I reached back and pointed at his head, sending a blast of power strong enough to decapitate him. His grip loosed long enough for me to slip out only for me to be hit in the solar plexus by Shucai.

Gasping for breath, I grabbed Shucai by the throat, and I brought my other hand forward, blasting him directly in the eye. He screamed in a rage and he hit me in the ear.

The two of them were suddenly on me, hitting me with a flurry of blows. I was having trouble keeping up with them; it was almost like I was seeing double. I blasted back, power exploding from my front and driving them back.

"These were your people!" I said. "And you did this to fool me?"

He stood staring at me for a moment, looking as though he didn't understand my outrage. He'd murdered millions of people not because he hated them, or because he profited from it, but simply as a ruse?

"It was proof of my conviction," Shucai said. "Proof that I was worthy of the stars."

I launched a series of energy blasts that hit both him and Scion. "He's going to turn on you the moment I'm dead, and then where will you be?"

"I'll be the strongest," he said, dodging.

"You'll be nothing," I said. I sent a disc of energy flying at his midsection. It missed him, and I sent it flying back toward me.

The energy fizzled when Scion was suddenly behind me grabbing me by the arms, and Shucai began a series of punches to my middle. I struggled but I couldn't catch my breath.

I screamed as Shucai formed his Ki into a dagger and plunged it into my side. That was my technique!

"This is the end," he said, grinning. "Of you, and everybody. I'll give your father your regards before I send him to hell too."

He was going to do it. He was going to kill my father. He was going to kill Garrett. He was going to kill Leet and Sophia, and everyone at school. The entire world was nothing to him, just a speed bump on his way to becoming something stronger.

Even worse, it was all going to be for nothing. The lives of six billion people wasn't a good trade for getting stronger, but the lives of an infinity number of people was an even worse trade. And in the end, he would die along with the rest of us.

I screamed and I kept on screaming. I felt something changing inside of me, and all around I could see rocks beginning to rise into the sky. Lightning flashed, and a great wind drove Shucai back.

He was staring at me, wide eyed.

There was pain, enough that I could barely feel Scion holding onto me, and a blast of power from me cause Scion's grip to slip. He backed away from me.

"I won't let you do this!"

I could see blue lightning rising from my aura. My hair felt as though it was growing longer, even though that didn't make a lot of sense.

Making progress in my Super Saiyan form had let me work through some of the sociopathy that came with it. I'd been able to regain my emotions by staying in the form all the time over most of the summer.

All of that was washed away now, and my mind was suddenly clear of all emotions.

I'd been subconsciously holding back, I could see that now. I knew Shucai, and I'd been trying to convince him that he was wrong. That was never going to happen, which meant that the simple and intelligent thing to do was to end him once and for all so that I could focus on the real threat. His working together with Scion was unacceptable.

The risk to the world was too great to worry about preserving any one life, even if it was my own.

"You keep talking about a form greater than Super Saiyan," I said to Shucai, sneering. "How does it feel to come up short again?"

Before he could respond, I gathered my energy and formed it into a flaming sword.

"You were always worthless," I said. "Weak. Not in you body, but in your mind. Getting rid of you will make the world a better place."

"What makes you think you can-"

I was right next to him, and my sword was in his chest.

"You were never in my league," I whispered in his ear. "And now you never will be."

I saw him fall, and the golden light that surrounded his body flickered and died. A moment later I felt his Ki wink out.

I should have felt something, anything. Sadness, guilt, satisfaction, something. I'd spent months with the man, and surely some of that time would have amounted to nothing.

It didn't. Nothing penetrated the coldness around my heart.

I turned to Scion, who was watching me impassively. "You made me do this. You want to kill this world, all the worlds. You move from one to the other, killing and killing, and what do you really accomplish?"

He didn't answer.

A moment later I was on him, slashing away. My sword cut pieces of him off, but as fast as I destroyed parts, more were created. He had an unending amount of flesh, and it was possible that I would be doing this forever.

Scion grabbed the wound in my side, and he directed a blast inside.

My insides suddenly felt as though they were on fire, as though I was burning from the inside out. As far as I knew I was.

I managed to pull myself away from him. I could feel my eyes swelling from the blows that I had already suffered. The air was burning in my chest, and even the new found power that I'd discovered didn't seem to be making that much of a difference.

A touch of my finger, and the world shifted around me.

Amy was next to me, and as she touched me, cooling relief filled me. I felt myself growing stronger. Alexandria and the others were standing there; Amy was in a Cauldron facility.

"You'll need to keep moving her," I said. "If Scion realizes that she's making me stronger she'll be a target."

Killing the healer is what I would do; it was tactically the best decision.

A moment later I was back on the battlefield. Scion was moving west, presumably to find more cities to destroy. I wasn't about to let that happen, and so I launched myself at his back. The sword was already forming in my hand.

This new form made me stronger and faster, and the healing from Amy made me stronger again. Yet despite that, Scion turned and was on me before I could slash at me.

He'd been holding back, I saw.

His entire race gave power from people to learn new tactics and new ways to use powers. While that was their primary way of learning, he wasn't averse to learning things the old fashioned way.

Holding back with me would give him an opportunity to see what I could do, and to catalog ways to defeat others like me. It would draw me out and force me to show him my tricks. In the end, nothing I did would work, because he wasn't really here.

It was like fighting someone with a drone. You were never in danger, and if you had enough drones, then sooner or later they would be destroyed. Scion had all the drones, and I was fighting a losing battle.

Yet I couldn't let him simply destroy the Earth. I had to take this battle somewhere else, somewhere that not as many people would get hurt.

If I could reach an empty Earth, then I could unleash my real power without being forced to hold back. Even now, with my mind clear of emotions I wasn't yet ready to take the steps that Shucai had taken. I wasn't willing to sacrifice the lives of innocent people for a tactical advantage.

I wouldn't do that unless it was absolutely necessary.

It was a variant of the old trolley problem. If a trolley was going to crash into five people, killing them, and the only way to save them would be to kill one, was that the ethical choice?

I suspected that my normal mind would say no, but my new improved mind had fewer qualms. That didn't mean that I would be as stupid as Shucai and sacrifice people needlessly.

If there was a third way, I would find it. If there wasn't, I would try to kill as few people as possible while saving the rest. It was what Cauldron had done, and while I'd been disgusted by their methods in the past they didn't seem so bad now.

"I'm going to kill you," I told Scion. "And when I'm done with that, I'm going to go into space, and I'm going to kill off all the members of your race. I'm going to eliminate every single genocidal monster that ever existed, and I'm going to spit on your cooling corpses."

That didn't get a response.

"I only wish your wife was still alive so that I could murder her in front of you. Instead she went down like a little bitch, proving that she was weak and unworthy."

For the first time I saw an expression on his face other than grief.

It was a mirror for my own; pure, unadulterated rage. We flew together and the sounds of our fists meeting caused a shockwave that sounded like thunder.

I felt a pure, savage joy. This is what fighting was meant to be about. This is what I was made to do. I was made to fight monsters, to slay dragons, to end the lives of those who would kill others.

My mind focused, and I stopped thinking about anything but what was in front of me. I barely noticed the effects that we were having on the world around us.


	73. Trolley

I wasn't going to win this.

Already I'd had to return to Panacea twice, and each time I left he rocketed to destroy another city before I could return. Already he'd destroyed Beijing and Tianjin. Fifty million people were dead if you included those killed in Shanghai, and he was just getting started.

He couldn't detect me when I teleported away, which was visibly frustrating him. By destroying a city of millions each time I took a break, he was encouraging me to fight a little longer, a little harder, to misjudge the moment when I would no longer have the energy to get away.

It was a war of attrition. One that only had one way of ending.

It was true that I was sixteen times as strong as I had been this morning, but that didn't matter when I couldn't apply my strength. I had no way of getting to Scion because there was so much of him.

His body was scattered over a hundred different worlds, and unlike the Endbringers, there wasn't a single point of origin that I could pinpoint and target. All of him was alive, and there wasn't any way I could find the one piece of him that held his consciousness.

I could destroy a world that he was on, but there would still be a hundred others, and he would come for me. Using the energy to destroy an entire world would drain me, possibly enough for him to destroy me finally and then begin the process to destroy all of humanity.

The other part of the problem was that I was getting tired.

Each time I went to Amy it was taking more and more time to rejuvenate me. She got rid of the fatigue poisons in my blood, but there was only so much she could do to give me back the energy I needed to keep on fighting.

If only I could take the energy I needed from somewhere else. The problem was that even if I got the people on this planet to agree, it would take a long time, and in the meantime Scion would be working his way toward me, killing and slaughtering his way across the Middle East and Europe, and onto America.

Even if I somehow got enough energy to continue to fight, what was the point if he wasn't actually here?

I suspected that if I managed to destroy even a single Earth he was on, he'd start moving his body around, switching to protect his most vital, inner core. The only way I would win was to...

Well, there was one thing I could do.

It would require that I be away for longer than it had taken me to heal. That meant more people killed, more millions left to die. Was I able to make that kind of choice, to abandon the many to save the many more?

If I'd been in my base form, I probably couldn't have made that kind of decision, but my new form had a kind of cold logic that was hard to argue with.

Failure wasn't an option, and if I did fail, those people were dead anyway. At least this way their deaths would actually mean something.

For the first time I vanished from Scion without being badly injured.

Instead of to Amy, I went to the basement of the Cauldron facility, the place where Eidolon had been held for weeks. He looked wasted, having been abandoned in the chaos of Cauldron preparing for war.

I grabbed his hand, and I reached into his mind, and this time I _screamed._

For the first time I felt a crack in the wall he had put around himself, and I jammed myself in with a cold ruthlessness, uncaring of whether this did permanent damage to his mind or not. Always before I'd been afraid, and now I simply didn't care.

I showed him what was happening right now; what was happening every single moment that he chose to lock himself away instead of rising up to do his duty.

His shock was apparent to me. He'd been unable to cope with the idea that he was responsible for the deaths of millions, and now I was telling him he was going to be responsible for the deaths of untold quintillions.

It almost made him go under again, but then I showed him my plan, and I felt something suddenly growing deep inside of him. It was something that I hadn't felt from him in a long time.

Hope.

At the bottom of his being, for all of his other flaws, Eidolon was a hero. He'd wanted a challenge, and he'd wanted power, but he'd wanted to save people too. He'd _needed_ to save them, and he'd been willing to sacrifice himself to accomplish that.

I was offering him that chance right now, and as he woke I began to flood his body with power; not to heal him, which was inefficient and he wasn't even injured. This was power to replenish that which he had so thoughtlessly squandered over the past decades.

I could feel that parts of him sucked up the power greedily. He'd been weak, and now I was making him strong, and I could feel his gratitude.

"The world needs you," I said.

As he had so many times before, and possibly for the last time, he rose on shaky legs and prepared to do battle.

A moment later I was back on the battlefield, over the remains of another burning city. Scion had destroyed two more cities while I was gone; another twenty five million people dead according to the thoughts of the officials I could read in the distance.

Hopefully it was worth it. I would have to fight Scion more until everything was in place, and unfortunately that was going to take some time.

Eidolon wasn't going to be able to get everything ready as fast as I would like, but this was the only chance that we had, and it was a plan that I had to embrace wholeheartedly.

Scion kept pushing me back, further and further. We were over India now, and part of the reason that I wasn't doing better was that I had to keep protecting the cities below me. There wasn't time to evacuate everyone, and with no knowledge of where Scion would go next there was nowhere that everyone could go. Their best bet would be to spread out in the countryside, and considering the power of the energy we were using, blasting dozens of square miles at a time, even that wouldn't be a guarantee of safety.

We passed over India with only a few thousand casualties. Scion looked as though he had a destination now, and he was taking a grim sort of enjoyment of my increasing desperation. He was enjoying my anger and frustration as we got closer and closer to my homeland.

Now we were passing over the Sahara desert, and I reached out mentally.

"Faruk," I said. I never did learn how to spell his name. "Now is the reason Allah has done this to you. Now is your chance to save your people, all people."

Ash Beast was there suddenly, and I forced Scion down into his blast. He reached back to try to rend Ash Beast, but I held him in the fires. They hardly bothered me at all, but Scion's durability wasn't true immunity; parts of him were dying, and he began to struggle in earnest. The longer I held him here, the weaker he would get, even if it was only a small percentage of his total mass.

More importantly, the longer I held him, the more time I was buying. While we were doing this, he wasn't killing people or destroying cities.

I could see Faruk, who was staring up fiercely at the monster who was planning to destroy the world. He increased the intensity of his fire, and now even I was beginning to feel it.

All that power snuffed out suddenly as Scion did... something. Ash Beast fell, and once again his body was that of a sad man, but the expression on his face wasn't sad at all. He'd seemed dead before, but this time I had a sense it was likely to be permanent. He'd made his death mean something, and I would make sure that he was remembered.

Scion lashed out at me, only to have his fist grabbed by an immense clawed hand.

Monsters were exploding from the sand, and above us was the floating apparition of the Simurgh. I could feel all seventeen of them, surrounding us and heading in to attack Scion.

He did it.

Eidolon had summoned all of the Endbringers to fight on the side of humanity. All of them, with all of their tricks. I didn't think that they would be enough to beat him, but they didn't need to beat him. They just needed to distract him long enough that I could do what I had to do.

I teleported away, this time to Leet's lab.

"Have you done it?" I asked urgently.

He nodded.

I'd sent him an urgent message at the beginning of the fight, hours ago, and he'd been working feverishly to build an amplifier that would be strong enough for what I needed.

It was the size of a backpack, and I stared at him.

"If you wanted it small and elegant you should have given me a couple of months. This is the best I could do. You'll be lucky if it doesn't blow up on you; I've never built anything like it before."

I grabbed it, and without saying anything I teleported away. Getting to live along with the rest of humanity would be his thanks, and every second I wasted on idle minutia was time that more people could be killed.

"Door," I said.

I asked the Doorman telepathically to take me to an uninhabited planet. I needed that because I wasn't sure what was going to happen to the world around me when I did this, and because it was possible that Scion would sense what I was doing on Earth and try to stop me.

Looking around I saw that the planet Doorman had chosen ft my specifications. It was a dead world; I could feel that there was very little life on it and the skies were covered with ash and fog. It was perfect for my purposes.

I closed my eyes, and I powered down.

Suddenly the wounds I had suffered hurt exponentially more, and the fatigue I felt was overwhelming. The thought of the people who had died just because I had gone to Panacea gnawed at the edge of my consciousness, but I forced it away.

This was the most important speech that I was ever going to give, and it wasn't even going to be a verbal one. People wouldn't believe a verbal speech. There were a lot of worlds out there where no one had super powers. People would think that they were crazy, or that they were being sent a message by a witch.

Not everyone out there spoke English even in our own world. There were an effectively limitless number of worlds out there, and the probabilities were that most of them didn't speak English at all.

My only choice was to share experiences. I needed to make people believe, and the only way to do that was to share how I felt. People turned away all the time from an intellectual plea, but an emotional one...

Closing my eyes, I shared my memories of the Endbringers, of Scion. I shared my images of all the worlds being destroyed, of the Earth, all Earths becoming dust in the cosmic wind. Somewhere along the way other images slipped in... my Mom, my Dad... times where I was the happiest.

It seemed to take forever, even though, moving at the speed of thought it couldn't have taken long at all.

I then waited.

I'd made a plea for energy, not merely from my Earth, but from all of them that I could reach. If I reached even one person on every Earth, I'd have more than enough power to accomplish my goal.

At first it didn't seem like it worked, and I felt my heart drop. Then I felt a little energy coming in. It was from my home world, coming from Brockton Bay. A little more came, then more and more.

I could feel the people of my world speaking to me through their Ki. They would fight, and they would not lay down and die. They would not kneel to their fate, but they would stand.

A trickle at first, the power soon was becoming a flood. I felt people all over the world raising their hands and giving me their energy.

The flood grew larger as I felt Earth Aleph join in. Then I felt another Earth join, even though there were only a few thousand people there. A third Earth had over twelve billion, and the flood of power that came from them was almost overwhelming.

A fourth world, a fifth. The power started coming in from world after world, and I felt tears coming to my eyes. I was channeling the power above me, but even the effort of letting the power flow through me was growing painful. It was more power than I had ever imagined having, and it grew and grew to a force larger than anything I had ever seen.

A tenth world, an eleventh. A twentieth, a fortieth. The numbers began to blur in my mind as the power I was gathering began to burn. Every cell in my body began to feel like it was on fire simply from the effort to channel the power.

I screamed, and it seemed to go on forever.

A hundred worlds, two hundred worlds. This hurt more than being in Ash Beasts fire the first time. I was burning alive, and part of me wanted to just give up, to let go and fall unconscious. I couldn't, I wouldn't though because I knew what that would mean for everyone that I had ever loved.

Four hundred worlds, five hundred, eight hundred. The power came in faster and faster. Humanity was voting with with their own life force, each person lending a little portion of their Ki.

Two thousand, five thousand worlds.

The moon crumbled in the sky, and the Earth around me began to dissolve upward as the energy began to develop it's own gravitational pull. I couldn't see the moon any more, because the entire sky was covered with the energy. It stretched from horizon to horizon, and all I could see was the power. It had to be more power than anyone had ever wielded, and we were up to twenty thousand worlds.

Power was still coming in, but I knew that if I kept this up I would die.

I shut off the flow of power, and I closed my eyes. I had not tried this before; bringing a living person to another place had never worked, but because this Ki had passed through me, I had left traces of myself in it, and it was part of me.

I began pulling parts of the Ki away from the ball, blinking back and forth much as I did when I moved so fast that the human eye saw multiple images of me.

Being away from the ball would cause it to explode, which meant that I had to move faster than I had ever moved before. I let power blaze into me into my new transformation, and then I began to move, faster that I had ever moved.

In the space of less than a second I broke through the barriers Scion had set to travel to his dimension. I literally had power to burn, and that made it trivial to burn through two hundred dimensional barriers. For the first time I moved so fast that I achieved something that I had never managed before.

Always before I'd appeared as an afterimage, moving just faster than the human eye could see. It was the same thing that made motion pictures possible; a series of still images would look like they were moving because the human eye couldn't see the spaces between the frames.

Now though, enhanced by the power of tens of thousands of worlds, of seventy trillion human souls, I temporarily had powers I could never have dreamed of.

I was able to move fast enough to actually be two hundred places at the same time, and in each different Earth I had a ball of power that was one half of one percent of the monstrous, planet sized ball of energy that I had summoned.

Even these lesser balls were the size of the moon.

Each of Scion's worlds were covered with a gray sea of writhing flesh. They didn't look like Earth at all, except for occasional mountain ranges piercing through the oceans below.

On two hundred worlds I threw two hundred balls of incomprehensible energy below, and I watched dispassionately as they struck the world.

To save all of the other worlds I had to totally obliterate two hundred. That was my version of the Trolley problem; kill the man who had set the trolley careening toward the innocents in the first place.

I wrenched myself away as each of the worlds exploded into blinding light, and I found myself suddenly falling.

No mortal was ever meant to have that sort of power, and now I felt like an empty shell. I couldn't feel Ki any more; I couldn't feel anything. I didn't even know which Earth I had ended up on. All I knew was that I was done.

Would I even know if I had been successful or not? I didn't know, and I couldn't seem to worry about anything. My mind was a blank.

The golden light around me winked out, and all I felt was the air rushing past my body as I fell through the uncaring skies.


	74. End plans

I was barely conscious as I felt gentle hands on my body. They lifted me carefully, and a moment later I was unconscious again.

Over the next few days I slipped in and out of consciousness. When I finally woke, I realized that I was on a boat, and we were moving down a river. Kindly dark skinned faces looked down on me, and they were paddling.

Where was I? The channels that had held my Ki were raw, and trying to use any hurt, but even so I could feel that we were approaching a city of some size.

There were sounds of helicopters coming, an I faded out of consciousness again, only to wake on a helicopter, looking at even more dark skinned faces.

I woke in a hospital room.

Eidolon was sitting beside my bed.

"What happened?" I asked.

"As far as I can tell, we won," he said. "It took all but three of the Endbringers, and we lost Doormaker, but Scion just disintegrated in front of us."

My mouth felt dry. "How long has it been?"

"A week," he said. He glanced around him. "Scion managed to kill Doormaker when he detected some of the doorways he was making to move troops in. No one has seen Alexandria or Panacea since then."

They were trapped on the other world, without a way to get back.

"That's why nobody came to pick me up," I said.

"Your father and the other Saiyans are also on the other side, which is why I'm the one who is here for you." Eidolon said. He hesitated. "You know your secret identity is gone, right?"

"What?" I asked.

"When you gave that last message to the entire world... parts of the memories you sent us included your identity. It included how you felt about... everything. Every person on Earth knows who you are, and they all know what you did."

Everyone in five thousand worlds. I hoped that it didn't cause problems for my counterparts in other worlds, especially if they didn't have the same powers that I did.

"And how are they taking it?" I asked.

"We've had to put guards on our guards," Eidolon said dryly. "People are going crazy wanting to get to you. The whole world has been celebrating, at the least the parts that weren't destroyed."

I felt a sudden sense of guilt. "How many people died?"

"A hundred million," he said. "Most of them from the CUI. Their government was basically decapitated, and the entire country has degenerated into warring factions trying to take over what's left."

I grimaced. "I didn't want anyone to die."

"You made the right call. They almost certainly planned to kill you and use Shucai to take over. Whether that would have worked out for them, no one can know."

We were both silent for a moment.

"So what now?" I asked.

"There were enough Cauldron assets left here on planet that I was able to get a likely future projection. There probably won't be many more natural triggers; there may have been a few floating around that hadn't taken root yet, but when you destroyed the rest of Scions true body, you destroyed the source of natural triggers."

"Maybe that's for the best. Powers haven't done a lot for the world."

Eidolon shook his head. "We're going to need them to rebuild. The fight damaged millions of acres of farmland in Africa, and there is going to be a massive famine. We're releasing Panacea's solution to help the people there."

"The stuff that turns your skin green?"

"It doesn't completely remove the need to eat, unless you basically sunbathe for several hours a day, but if it can give people seventy five percent of the food they need, it can make a huge difference. We're distributing it to the Chinese too, because their farmland was hurt even worse."

"I was trying to keep him away from the cities."

"No one is complaining," he said. He was silent for a moment. "I wan to thank you for giving my strength back, and for reminding me of why I became a hero in the first place."

"I did what I had to," I said. "I couldn't let you keep taking a vacation when the world was ending... plenty of time for that afterward, one way of another."

"Are you going to be able to use your powers again?" he asked. "I've got Leet building an interdimensional transporter, but it won't work unless the other end is in the other dimension. He has no way of pinpointing Cauldron's universe."

"I can feel Ki some," I said. "It may take me a while to get strong enough to feel other dimensions, though. I don't know how long; I've used Panacea or the Bacta tank to heal for so long that I don't know how long natural healing will take?"

"Will the Bacta tank help?" he asked.

"I'm not physically injured," I said. "I think it's going to have to heal on its own. I don't think anyone has come up with a way to deal with metaphysical injuries."

"We'll have to talk about it later," Eidolon said. "You are still officially the leader of Cauldron, so I suspect you've got a few ideas about what you want to do with the world. You should think about it."

He stood up. "Get some rest, and heal. The world needs you."

A moment later he was gone.

Sophia slipped into the room a moment later.

"Sophia?" I asked.

"They've got us guarding you twenty four hours a day until they're sure you can protect yourself again. This is my shift," she said. She grimaced. "I've had all I can take of the partying. Did you know they're planning to dedicate a holiday to you?"

"What?"

"Hebert day or some shit like that. I don't think they've come up with a name for it. It's almost enough to make me wish Kaiser was still alive. He'd have an aneurysm."

"I'm not Jewish," I said peevishly. "My name is French."

"It's not like the Nazis liked the French very much either," Sophia said. "Knowing that some girl saved the world... some Jewish girl."

"I just said..."

She grinned, her teeth white against her dark skin.

We were silent for almost a minute before Sophia said, "Did you know that I was helping your Dad train those Chinese wimps?"

"No," I admitted. "I was busy with Shucai. Why?"

"He asked. But we learned something interesting."

She held her hand out in front of her, and frowned, concentrating. It took her several seconds, but a moment later a ball of bluish flame appeared over her hand. It was tiny, far smaller than what I'd been able to generate even in the beginning, but the implications were staggering.

"You mean we can teach Ki to ordinary people?"

"Uber is already way ahead of me," she admitted, frowning. "Leet's been trying, but he can't get it no matter what he does. The bigwigs in the Protectorate want to see whether it is something anyone can do, or if you have to have some kind of inborn talent for it."

She closed her hand and the light disappeared.

"Either way, they are wanting to start a school, and your Dad insisted that it be opened in Brockton Bay... or at least he did before he disappeared."

"He'll be fine," I said. I could almost feel his life force at the edge of my awareness. It was enough to make me believe that he was alive.

A school like that in Brockton Bay would bring resources to the city. Everyone would want their people trained there, and it was likely that national governments would pay a lot to have it done, especially if there were no other new parahumans.

That would mean that the city would be on the map, and businesses would move in just to be near it. It would require housing, restaurants, entertainment... it was exactly what a city like Brockton Bay needed to get back on its feet. I could see Dad making sure that local people got the jobs too.

If he and I were the only ones who could teach the skill, that meant we had a monopoly.

Sophia looked down at her hands.

"I'm really sorry for what I did to you," she said. "I'd like to say I didn't know how you felt but I didn't really care. I was going through some things and I took it out on you."

"What brought this on?"

"Your message," she said. "I felt what you felt, and the bullying was part of it. I don't think you realize just how much of yourself you put into it, or you wouldn't have opened yourself up that much. I sure as hell didn't. I'm just glad nobody saw my face, or I'd be looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life."

"Why?"

"Because people would hate me as much as I've hated myself, and a lot of them wouldn't stop at just shoving me or saying things. I'd be the most hated person on the planet, and even my family wouldn't be safe."

I'd heard of Internet mob justice; seeing something like that in real life would be chilling.

"I would have thought Ems might be ready to apologize," she continued, "She had to have heard you the same as me. But she's locked herself in her room and hasn't come out for a week."

I was silent for a moment. "I was done with her a long time ago."

She nodded. "I just wanted you to know that I really am sorry... not that I'll admit it around anyone else. I can't have anyone thinking that I'm a whiny weak little bitch."

"Don't worry," I said. "They just think you're a regular kind of bitch."

She shrugged.

"I can't argue with the facts. But at least I didn't broadcast my secret identity to the whole world."

"Five thousand," I muttered.

"What?"

"Five thousand worlds," I said. "That I was communicating with."

"So you mean there's worlds out there where like... humans didn't evolve, and lizard people know who you are?" she asked. "Maybe even people with ass faces."

"You're the one with the ass face," I said. "And maybe? I didn't bother checking the race of the people I took power from."

"Which is why a Nazi never would have saved us," Sophia said.

We both chuckled.

"So what are you going to do once you get back on your feet?"

"Help rebuild," I said. "Maybe for a year or two,."

"And then?"

"Well, I promised Scion that I was going to go out into space and kill all of his brothers and sisters. I kind of hate to break a promise."

Sophia whistled. "That's a pretty tall order."

"It's the only way I'm going to get stronger. Besides, what am I going to do around here? I've pretty much served my purpose, and how long is it going to be before people start feeling threatened by me?"

"We've got guards on you right now because there's been talk about killing you before you wake up," Sophia admitted. "By some members of Congress. There's some people who are worried that you'll take over the planet. They didn't make it public, because people would riot if they did, but there's been some inquiries. It was enough for the Bigwigs to make us watch you."

I wasn't sure just how much protection Sophia and a few PRT troopers would really be, not if they really wanted to get to me, but I could also feel a couple of Dragon's suits nearby. That was probably a bigger deterrent.

"What would I do with the planet if I had it?" I asked. "Build a throne and stroke a white cat?"

"Neeerd," she said, but if she caught the reference that meant she'd seen the same movies I had.

"It's gonna be a new world," Sophia said. "Won't have to hold back on the crooks with the Endbringers gone or under control. Hell, now that Eidolon's got three of them working for him, nobody is ever gonna take a potshot at him again."

Because what if Eidolon dying triggered them to start killing again. Right.

"We're going to kick ass and take names," she said enthusiastically. "And your Dad's school is going to make it worse for the villains. They'll probably be having you teach cops and soldiers mostly... none of this more villains than heroes crap."

There would probably be disputes about who got taught. The United States would want to be the only ones who had powered soldiers and cops, but every other country in the world would insist that they got part of the pie too. It might even end up in global conflict if Dad and I allowed something like that.

I wouldn't, at least while I was on planet, and I'd keep working on Dad until he was tough enough to leave behind.

"I'm not going to let the government take over," I said. "I'm going to make sure that regular people get a chance too."

"You'll get villains that way."

"Maybe we'll provide training in ethics too," I said.

"So what... real life Jedi?"

"Why not?" I asked. "You called me a nerd, but Dad's an even bigger one. Making the people with powers into ambassadors isn't the worst thing in the world."

"Yeah... it worked out great in the movies."

"Well, we'll try to do better," I said. "Not get all arrogant and complacent."

"Arrogant... you? No..." Sophia said exaggeratedly.

"I just blew up two hundred planets at the same time. That's kind of a big deal. So maybe I'm a little arrogant after that... sue me."

"Well, you'll never get me in one of those robes," she said. "They look like crap."

"You planning to join up?" I asked.

"Your Dad promised to teach me how to fly," she said. "That's really cool. He's not nearly as stupid as I thought the first time I met him."

"Right."

"Uber too. He's kind of kick ass, and he's got great..."

"Don't say buns," I warned her.

"Moves," she said. "Hell, it never even occurred to me to try to do the crap you and your dad were doing. Who ever heard of parahuman powers you could _learn_? But he tried, and he figured it out, and that makes him a kind of a genius."

"Well, his talent _is_ learning skills or something," I said. "Maybe he just thought he could pick up a few things."

"Well, anyway..." Sophia said. "I'll bet you the first day of school is gonna be weird for you."

"What?"

"Everybody knowing who you are..."

"Glory Girl and Panacea made it work," I said.

"They weren't crap in terms of being famous. You know how everybody thinks they know celebrities because they've seen them on TV? Well, imagine that except that they've actually been inside of your head. They actually will know you."

"Maybe I'll get to home school," I said. "At least until I go off planet. We can argue that my being at school puts the kids in too much danger."

"Are you kidding? You eat Endbringers for lunch; if anything people are going to want their kids in your school because they'll be safer there than anywhere else."

I shrugged uncomfortably. There wasn't anything I could do about it; I'd have to make a decision soon, though, because school was about to start in a couple of weeks.

"I wonder how many kids are going to be brave enough to ask you out," Sophia said. "They'd have to have balls the size of the moon to even think about it, even if they are a girl."

"Who cares?" I asked. "I'm just going to focus on repairing the world and getting ready for my next fight."

"There's more to life than just stomping on villains," Sophia said. She looked surprised. "Not that I ever thought I'd hear myself saying that. "

"Scion's people have been destroying whole races over thousands of years," I said. "Every one of them I kill will save more people than... anything."

"Squid people, probably," Sophia said dismissively.

"You don't understand," I said. "Since this last set of power ups, I can feel the life on other worlds. There are worlds that are brimming with life, places the Entities would love to devour. I could teleport to one of them right now... or at least when my powers get back to normal, assuming I knew I could breathe the air. I'm going to get Leet to build me something to help, or maybe have Panacea change me so I can adapt to alien atmospheres. She'd probably be happy to do that."

"Good to know that you're so confident that people will do what you want," Sophia said dryly.

"Well, either they like me, or they want me to leave. Either way they'll help me."

"Right," Sophia didn't look convinced, but it didn't matter.

I'd won, and when I'd finished turning the planet into the kind of place where people would want to live, I was going to seek out new worlds and new challenges. I'd come home sometimes; probably like a kid who was off to college; mostly to get my laundry done and pick up some extra money.

In the space of a few months I'd gone from being powerless and bullied to being the most powerful person on the planet. I loved that feeling, and I liked helping people... even if they turned out to be squid people, or little green men.

For now, at least, life was good.


End file.
